Purpose of this study was to investigate environmental literacy of 6th grade students at a private school. In detail of study it is also investigated that how mothers&amp / #8217 / educational background on environmental literacy dimensions (knowledge, attitude, use and concern) and besides, relationship between environmental background characteristics and environmental literacy dimensions. The study was carried out during the fall semester of the 2007-2008 academic year. The sample of study was chosen from an accessible population and consisted of 681 sixth grades students from a private school in Ankara. Environmental Literacy Questionnaire (ELQ) is used to collect data. The relationship among environmental literacy dimensions i.e., knowledge, attitude, use and concern was investigated by Means of zero order correlation. Effect of mothers&amp / #8217 / educational level on the environmental literacy of the students is analyzed by Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA). Finally, canonical correlation is used in order to analyze relationship among environmental background of students, that is self-assessment about their interest in environmental problems (perception of interest), their views on the importance of environmental problems (perception of importance), their self evaluation of their environmental knowledge (perception of knowledge), their involvement in outdoor activities (activities), their perception of their parents&amp / #8217 / interest in environmental problems (parents&amp / #8217 / interest) and their perception of their parents&amp / #8217 / involvement in environmental activities (parents&amp / #8217 / involvement) / and environmental literacy dimensions. Results showed that majority of students (64%) received with mean of 8.2 questions out of 11 questions. Results also revealed that they have positive attitude, aware of importance between human and environment. Moreover, students have concerns about environmental problems. Results of means of zero order correlations indicated that between knowledge - use and attitude &amp / #8211 / concern are correlated positively, significantly but small. Moreover attitude-use and use &amp / #8211 / concern are correlated strong and medium in that order. Effect of mothers&amp / #8217 / educational level on EL, which is analyzed by Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA), indicated that dimensions of EL do not differentiate significantly by education level of mothers. By canonical correlation, it is found that parents&amp / #8217 / involvement in environmental activities positively related to environmental attitude, use and concern which stand for increase in parents&amp / #8217 / environmental involvement, increase in attitude, use and concern.

The purpose of this study was to examine the views of parents and preschool school administrators about preschool movement education and the practices regarding the teaching movement education to young children in early childhood programs. Participants (8 preschool administrators and 21 parents) were from 8 randomly selected private preschool in the region of &Ccedil / ankaya, Ankara, Turkey. Semi structured interview and document analysis methods were used for data collection. Content analysis method was used for data analysis. The results suggested that play and movement activities had no effects on parents&rsquo / school choice and parents did not seem to be influential on curriculum decisions about movement education activities. Structured play and movement activities were not considered as an academic subject by both groups. Instead participants perceived structured play and movement activities as a free play. Parents were aware of subjects as math, science and language / but they had limited knowledge about movement education activities. Parents generally focused on children&rsquo / s such sport specific activities as swimming, tennis, horse riding which were not developmentally appropriate for children&rsquo / s fundamental movement skills. Demands about the additional skills related with the movement education focused more on sport specialized activities and large environments for children to play comfortable. To conclude, parents and administrators have little knowledge about movement education so they are needed to be informed about the subject through educative workshops or seminars given by the people who are professional in their field.

This study examined the perceptions of the Students and the Teachers of METU Development Foundation Schools about the use of e-learning / sharing portal technology in their educational activities. Their perceptions were investigated in terms of three aspects: effects of the use of this technology on their perceived motivation, the perceived usefulness and the perceived ease of use of this technology. A central server was installed for setting up an e-learning / sharing portal environment. Microsoft SharePoint, which is a Sharing Portal Software, was used to access to the central server. The study was conducted in the form of action research. The data were collected from 6th and 7th grade students of METU Development Foundation Schools by using a questionnaire. Also, interviews were conducted with the teachers. Descriptive statistics, frequency distributions and descriptive analysis methods were used to analyze the results. The findings of the study indicated that the students and the teachers perceived that e-learning / sharing portal technology is a useful and also easy to use technology. It was found out that the students and the teachers are satisfied with advantages of the use of this new technology in their learning environment. In the same way, the teachers and the students stated that using the system effected students&rsquo / perceived motivation towards the educational activities in a positive way.

This study aimed at developing a complementary peer-teacher feedback model, in which students and teachers share the responsibility of providing feedback in a systematic way and testing its effectiveness. The effectiveness of the developed feedback model on improving students&amp / #8217 / writing ability was tested in the context of a multiple draft writing course which followed a process approach with 57 preparatory class students at Karadeniz Technical University, Department of English Language and Literature for a period of 15 weeks (a semester). The study was designed as an experimental study in which the experimental group students were provided feedback through a complementary peer-teacher feedback model and the control group students were provided feedback through full teacher feedback. The two groups were compared in terms of their revisions, their essay scores and their attitudes towards feedback and writing. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected through revision coding, a pretest and posttest on writing ability, two questionnaires and student reflections. The results revealed that although the traditional full teacher feedback model created more revisions on the whole, the two models did not create a difference in terms of revision quality or writing improvement between the two groups. On the other hand, the complementary peer-feedback model was found more successful in creating positive attitudes towards peer feedback and self-correction but no differences were observed in students&amp / #8217 / perceptions of the difficulty of writing skill. Some recommendations are made for the design and implementation of feedback activities in writing classes.

This study analyzed students&rsquo / perceived effectiveness of an online course delivered through one of the open source course content management system, Moodle. Students&rsquo / expectations, perception, comments and suggestions about Moodle were investigated in this study. This is a case study carried out 49 students who attended to CEIT321 Foundation of Distance Education course in summer school in 2008 and 29 students who attended to the same course in fall semester of 2008-2009 academic year at Computer Education and Instructional Technology at Middle East Technical University. Blended learning that combines face-to-face interaction and online learning was used in the course. In this study, the qualitative and quantitative data were gathered from the students attended to the study. The questionnaire was distributed to the participants at the end of the summer school and fall semester. In addition, interviews with the volunteer participants were conducted in order to understand students&rsquo / perceptions, thoughts, expectations, recommendations, and comments on Moodle and its applications. The data showed that students had positive attitudes towards Moodle and its application. This study can contribute the future research studies related with Moodle. Moreover, the results of this study can contribute the development of Moodle.

The purpose of the current study is to investigate how global and local thinking styles affect psychological well-being among undergraduate students. A total of 372 (213 females and 159 males) students at Middle East Technical University participated in this study. The qualitative data were gathered via self-report questionnaires including Scales of Psychological Well-Being, Thinking Styles Inventory and a demographic information form. To be able to determine the differences between psychological well-being due to global thinking and local thinking scores as well as gender, ANOVA was held. The results revealed a significant difference between high and low scorers of local thinking in terms of psychological well-being when the global thinking style was low. In addition, the findings indicated that for higher levels of psychological well-being individuals need to adopt one of the styles and report higher levels on that adopted style. On the other hand, the statistical analysis revealed no significant differences between high scorers of global thinking and low scorers of global thinking on psychological well-being. Additionally, no significant difference found between high scorers and low scorers of local thinking in terms of psychological well-being. Upon the examination of gender related findings, it was found that females reported higher levels of psychological well-being compared to males while males reported higher levels of global thinking than females did.

The purpose of the study was to investigate the impact of 5E learning cycle on sixth grade students&rsquo / mathematics achievement on and attitudes toward mathematics. The study was carried out in a public school in one of the towns of the Central Anatolia Region with 28 sixth-grade elementary school students. One group pretest-posttest design was used. Mathematics Achievement Test and Mathematics Attitude Scale were administered to collect the necessary data. The instruction will be applied by the researcher five hours per week in a 15-week. The data were analyzed by using one-way repeated measures analysis of variance and a paired-samples t-test. According to the results of the study it was found that there was a statistically significant change in mathematics achievement of sixth grade students who participated in the instruction based on 5E learning cycle over three time periods (pre-intervention, post-intervention, and follow-up). There was only no statistically significant mean difference between post-intervention and follow-up mathematics achievement. Furthermore, there was a statistically significant decrease in mean scores of attitudes toward mathematics from prior intervention to after intervention.

The purpose of this study was to identify seventh grade students&rsquo / computational estimation strategies and factors associated with these strategies. A case study was conducted with five students. They were selected among 116 seventh grade students from a public elementary school in Aegean region. Two sessions of clinical interviews were carried out with each participant. In the first interview session, the Computational Estimation Test, which was consisted of 15 estimation questions, was administered to students with requesting explanations of solving procedure. In the second interview session, students answered to semi-structured questionnaire prepared by the researcher to understand their feelings and thoughts on estimation. The results of the study indicated that students used three kinds of computational estimation strategies, which were reformulation, translation, and compensation. Reformulation was the most used types of estimation and by all interviewees. It was divided into four sub-strategies, which were observed during the interviews, among them rule based rounding was the most preferred one. The most sophisticated strategy was compensation, which was used least frequently by the participants. The other kind of computational estimation strategy was translation, which means changing the operation for handling the questions more easily. Translation strategy was used students who performed well in number sense. Based on interviews and observations, there were some cognitive and affective factors, which were associated with the specified strategies. Number sense and mental computation were two sub categories of the cognitive factors. Besides these cognitive factors, confidence in ability to do mathematics, perception of mathematics, confidence in ability to do estimation, perception of estimation and tolerance for error, which were identified as affective factors, played important role for strategy selection and computational estimation. Good number sense may lead to use of multiple representations of numbers and use of translation strategies. Moreover, mental computation ability may enable students both to conduct reformulation and use compensation strategy easily. Interviewees who had both high confidence in ability to do mathematics and low confidence in ability to do estimation, preferred exact computation and more rule dependent estimation strategies, like rule based rounding. Low tolerance for error may influence students&rsquo / answers, in order to produce them in a narrow interval. Additionally, perception of estimation may lead students recognize estimation as useful and use of variety of computational estimation strategies. According to data analysis, feelings and thoughts about computational estimation may influence interviewees&rsquo / strategy usage, such as students, who had negative feelings on estimation and thoughts about mathematics wanted exactness, generally preferred exact computation process and did not use diverse computational estimation strategies. Students who had poor in number sense and mental computation could not conduct computational estimation strategies. Therefore, the research study may lead to better understanding of students&rsquo / perspectives on computational estimation. With understanding used strategies, and related factors are affecting computational estimation strategies, it might be produce effective instructional designs for teaching computational estimation.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the perceived opinions of Turkish sports high school teachers, students and managers about these high schools. In order to reveal the practical conditions of sports high schools, three survey instruments were developed separately for sport high school students, teachers and managers related to school perception. Participants of this study were 1283 students, 50 teachers, and 26 managers of 11 sports high schools in Turkey. According to the results, participants&rsquo / expectations were not fully satisfied due to insufficient facility, personnel and material infrastructure of sports high schools. Results of this study also revealed that the majority of the students had shown high state of belonging and contentment to their particular sports high school, although managers and teachers had shown neutral scores according to state of belonging and contentment.

The purpose of this study is to investigate 11th and 12th grade high school students&rsquo / attitudes towards philosophy course and to examine whether their attitudes show significant differences with respect to certain background variables such as gender, school type, grade level, GPA of previous semester, philosophy course grade from the previous semester, mother&rsquo / s and father&rsquo / s education level, number of books available at home, and numbers of books read in the previous year. The sample consisted of 1322 high school students from 11th and 12th grades from 11 public and private high schools in the Province of Ankara. Data were gathered from the participants via Philosophy Course Attitude Scale developed by the researcher. Data were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. ANOVA was employed to investigate whether there were significant differences among students&rsquo / v attitude towards philosophy course with respect to certain background variables. Descriptive Statistics were used to analyze the background of information of the sample and attitudes of students towards philosophy course. The findings indicated that the students have moderate level of positive attitude towards philosophy course. The findings also showed that with the exception of the mother&rsquo / s education, each of the variables examined (gender, grade level, school type, GPA of previous semester, philosophy course grade from the previous semester, father&rsquo / s education, number of books available at home, number of books read in the previous year) created a significant difference in student attitudes towards the philosophy course.