This article discusses the meeting of the Second National Educational Council in 1943, the decisions made about teaching history and the preparation and implementation of histomaps, which was one of the decisions made about the teaching of history. For this purpose, document analyses are used and first hand and second hand resources were reviewed. The endeavor in this study is to show how one of the council decisions of the first years of the Republic is applied. Hasan Âli Yücel, the Minister of National Education assigned Hamit Zübeyr Koflay for this histomap task. Benefiting from the study of John B. Sparks (1931) named "The Histomap: Four Thousand Years of World History" and working with a team, Hamit Zübeyr Koflay developed a histomap compatible to Turkish History in 3 years. This case study is significant as it described the obligation of bureaucrats of the Ministry of National Education in the early 20s of the Republic. The histomap of Sparks by Rand McNally Publishing in the USA has been continuously updated since it was first developed. Unfortunately, since then the mechanisms were not constructed to update histomap of Koflay regarding the changing history course books and programs in Turkey.

Seven children aging between 3 and 6 years with developmental disabilities were participated in this study, which examined the effects of the Activity-Based Intervention Program (ABIP) on the transition skills. The study used time series design and the implementation process was composed of "before instruction phase", "instruction phase" and, "after instruction phase", each phase lasting 6 weeks "generalization phase" lasted 4 weeks. In the ABIP "following directions", "lining up", "working independently" and "collecting materials" skills were taught. In order to investigate the effect of ABIP, children were assessed two times before and after the instruction by using the Preschool Transition Skills Assessment Scale (PTSAS). Three time series for the four skills included in the program before and after the instruction by implementing task analytic recording and whole interval recording. A single measure was completed at the generalization phase by implementing task analytic recording. The results of the analysis show that significant differences are found at the after instruction phase comparing to the before instruction phase concerning children's PTSAS scores and at the percentages of correct responses and interval occurrence for the four skills.

The aim of this study was to develop a scale measuring attitudes toward strategic planning for primary and secondary school administrators. In the research, 498 school administrators (77 females, 421 males; 140 principles, 56 vice and 302 assistant administrators) consisted of the sampling group in three districts of Istanbul/Turkey according to the three different income levels. Study was completed at eight steps: (i) items were consisted, (ii) the study of content validation , (iii) the study of itemtotal point and item-remainder correlations, (iv) defining item-discrimination, (v) defining structure validation [(a) exploratory factor analysis, (b) confirmatory factor analysis (vi) defining Cronbach Alpha coefficient, (vii) correlations between sub-scales and (viii) the level of confidence was explained with the method of test retest. Item- total point and item-remainder correlations of the scale were found to be statistically significant. Item discrimination index was significant at the level of p < .01 for all items and they were found significant for sub and top 27% group meanings. As a result of the exploratory factor analysis, it was observed that the scale had a five- factor structure. The subscales are named as (i) Organizational Development, (ii) Distrust, (iii) Productivity, (iv) Efficiency and (v) Resistance. Factor loadings of the sub-scales ranged from .41 to .87. Self value of scale was 20.33 and percent of variance explained was 58.11. Result of confirmatory factor analysis showed that the value of chi-square (X2) and level of statically meaningful were enough for model suggested. Cronbach alpha coefficients of subscales ranged from .72 to .94 and for the total scale, it was .82. The test-retest coefficients ranged from .70 to .87. Findings showed that the scale had high internal consistency and validity in measuring the attitudes of school administrators towards strategic planning.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to evaluate both the positive and negative changes in the aims and practices of current schools and, in addition, identify teacher values that have influenced the Turkish educational system from the early years of the Turkish Republic till now. With this in mind, a set of semi structured open-ended questions were directed to 50 retired teachers in Ankara, Samsun, and Çorum. Questions aimed to identify the comparative views and thoughts on education, living conditions, and teaching objectives between 1940 and 2006. The information for eight study problems were listed, grouped and summarized in ten-year sessions. For descriptive purposes, Microsoft Excel version 7.00 was used in order to provide frequencies, percentages, and graphical representations of the data for the first two questions. The answers to the remaining six questions were categorized and conceptualized line by line for each respondent. According to the results, there have been noteworthy changes on the teachers' perceptions regarding the values, such as the goals of education, human rights, participation, productivity, creativity, and critical thinking over time. In addition, old photographs, memories, diaries and letters that belong to the participating retired teachers were used as the study materials. As the result, the emerging themes were summarized in order to demonstrate the changes in the teacher values over the years, from the early days of the Republic to today.

Studies focusing on the effectiveness of computer-assisted instruction have been growing recently in Turkey. In this research, quantitative studies comparing the effectiveness of computer- assisted instruction to traditional teaching method and conducted between 1998 and 2007 are studied by meta analysis. Seventy eight studies that have eligible data were combined with meta analytical methods by coding protocol from the 422 master's and doctoral degree and 124 articles. As a result for the study, the effect size of computer-assisted instruction method for academic achievement calculated 1.048. This is large scale according to Thalheimer and Cook, large and Cohen, Welkowitz and Ewen (2000). Recommendations were made based on the results of the study.

Improving teachers' reflective thinking skills about their instructional applications in their classrooms and their suggestions to solve the problems they face during teaching have become more important since the 80s. Reflective thinking is not only important for the professional development of teachers but it also plays a significant role in the institutional development of schools, eventually in the development of the society. Teachers' taking part in their teachings as researchers depends on their ability to adopt a researcher role and their experience in research. The participants of the present study were a group of third-grade pre-service teachers who were attending the Social Studies Teacher Education Program in the Education Faculty of Anadolu University. The study was conducted in order to understand the pre-service teachers' perceptions of their research experience in the scope of the course titled Research Method in Social Sciences. The data were collected in June, 2006 by using semi-structured interviews held with a total of 24 volunteering pre-service teachers. All the participants, 8 males and 16 females, were selected by using criterion sampling method. Content analysis was used to analyze the data. Findings showed that most pre-service teachers believed that teachers should conduct research for the purpose of solving the problems they might encounter in the learning-teaching process and for the purpose of professional development. Another finding was that the pre-service teachers considered the research process as a different experience, although they described the process as “difficult.” Most pre-service teachers also stated that they learned the research processes and understood research articles and theses. They pointed out that they were more willing to conduct a research after their experiences. In this process, some pre-service teachers experienced various problems in areas such as the description of the research problems, data collection, time management, data analysis, and group work. The pre-service teachers suggested that the course of Research Method in Social Sciences should take place in all teacher education programs in Turkey, the course should be offered with more course credits, and it should include field-experience. Final suggestion was that pre-service teachers should be guided effectively in the entire research process.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the perceptions of primary school teachers on principal cultural leadership behaviors, and examine the opinions of the participating teachers according to their various occupational characteristics. The study is descriptive in nature and evaluates the teachers' perceptions by using the Cultural Leadership Scale (Yıldırım, 2001). The population of the study is composed of teachers employed in the primary schools in Kahramanmarafl, a province located in the southeastern part of Turkey. The sample of the study is composed of a total of randomly selected 308 teachers. The analysis revealed that the perceptions of teachers regarding the cultural leadership behaviors of their principals vary significantly according to their gender, years of experience, and the subjects taught by the participants. On the other hand, participant teachers indicated that they were undecided about their principals' cultural leadership behaviors. In addition, as the years of experience of the teachers increased, teachers became more critical of their principals' cultural leadership behaviors. The culture of the school was not strong if the principals were not good at putting cultural leadership behaviors into practice in their schools. In order for the principals to be cultural leaders, they must take into account appropriate values and norms of the organization. It is suggested that principals be good models for staff by integrating cultural leadership behaviors into practice in their schools.

The skills necessary for the training of technical staff during their training and education vary according to the viewpoint of the employees. Like the nature of the industry, the skills of the staff are evolving continuously. The conformity of training institutions to this evolution is always among current issues; however, the implementation is not as easy as it may seem. According to the results of this study which was held to determine the applicability of a training system applied by the EC, USA, and other developed countries for decades and to make our vocational technical training system more efficient for meeting the requirement of the industry. This study is aimed to determine the needs of the industry on this issue. The industrial plants around Ankara were chosen as the sample of the study. The need for a new system and regulations is clearly seen to be necessary. A novel model thought to be suitable for Turkey's conditions and the developments over the world is proposed after the results of the study.

The aim of the present research was to investigate the effect of the amount and quality of content knowledge on pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). The chemical content of phases of matters was used as an example. The research sample consisted of 28 science student teachers. The lesson preparation task, content knowledge test and semi-structured interview were used to collect data. This study shows that science student teachers have basic knowledge, few misconceptions and certain inadequacies at conceptual level. Science student teachers had understanding difficulties about relationship between concepts affected by their previous experiences. It has been seen that most student teachers had consistent content knowledge. The results of this study emphasize that content knowledge had positive influence on pedagogical content knowledge. Content knowledge also influenced effective teaching practice.

The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness and efficiency of two teaching models, the expository presentation of Merrill and Tennyson's model and Gagne's model, in acquisition and maintenance of square and triangle concepts in students with mental retardation. The participants of the study were chosen from students with mental retardation who attended a private special education center located in Kahramanmaras. Three boys and one girl participated in the research. The design of the study was an adapted alternating treatment design. Two criterion referenced tests were developed and administrated to assess the discrimination levels of square and triangle in participating students. The results of the study showed that the Gagne model was more effective than the Merrill and Tennyson model on the concept acquisition and maintenance in two of the participants. However, the effectiveness of two models did not differ significantly in the remaining two participants. Both models were equally effective with these students. The results also showed that the Gagne model required less teaching time with three participating students compared to the Merrill and Tennyson model. Results of the study were discussed and recommendations for further research were provided.