The purpose of this study was to investigate the views of upper elementary mathematics teachers and students about the use of manipulatives in teaching and learning mathematics. This study is a qualitative case study. The participants of this study were four elementary mathematics teachers in a private school and their 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students. The data were collected through one-to-one interviews, observations and analyzing documents consisting of annual plan, daily plan, notebooks of students, and the field note that the researcher kept throughout the study. This study revealed that although all the teachers advocate the use of manipulatives in teaching mathematics, they use traditional teaching techniques in their classes. They mentioned different factors affecting their use of manipulatives in teaching mathematics such as not knowing how to use them, grade level, availability of materials, time constraints, students&rsquo / reactions (seeing them as a toy or not being accustomed to them), school administration, classroom management, not finding materials appropriate for the subject being taught and classroom size. In fact, these are the factors that are seen on the surface level. This study indicated that even when teachers are provided with training about the use of manipulatives, supported by the school administration, and provided with manipulatives, the use of manipulatives is largely determined by their views / beliefs about the nature of mathematics, how students can learn mathematics, the effect of manipulatives and their knowledge in using them. Students seemed to like learning by using manipulatives. When conditions were arranged for learning, they were willing to learn through manipulatives.

In this study, reading motivations of university students enrolled in the preparatory school of a private university in Ankara were investigated. Firstly, the factors that constitute the reading motivation in Turkish and English were explored using a questionnaire which was adapted from the related literature. Then, the relationship between L1 reading motivation and L2 reading motivation was investigated. Next, the relationship between L1 and L2 reading motivation and L2 reading achievement was analyzed separately. In addition to the nature of reading motivation, students&rsquo / text selections and reading habits (how often, how long and how many pages they read) were included in the analysis. Finally, preparatory school instructors&rsquo / and students&rsquo / perceptions of reading motivation and the factors influencing it were scrutinized. In order to address the issues stated above, both qualitative and quantitative data were collected with the help of a questionnaire and semi-structured face-to-face interviews. A total of 273 questionnaires were collected from the students in two instruction levels. In addition, fifteen teachers and eight students were interviewed. The findings indicated that there is a slight relationship between L1 reading motivation and l2 reading motivation. Secondly, L1 reading motivation and behaviors made no significant contribution to L2 reading achievement. However, L2 reading motivation and behaviors were found to be significant contributors of L2 reading achievement. Among these, while the factor anxiety was found to be a significant factor in pre-intermediate level and the factor comfort was the significant factor in the upper-intermediate level. Among the text selections, students prefer to read, transactional texts had a positive correlation with L2 reading achievement. Finally, time students spend reading in English was found to be a significant contributor. Apart from the questionnaire data, the teacher interviews revealed that several other factors affect students&rsquo / reading motivation and their reading comprehension such as the classroom-specific motivational variables and the family and educational backgrounds of the students.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between some of selected affective characteristics of high school students related to physics lesson and their physics achievement in electricity concept. These affective characteristics of the students includes their interest in physics, importance of physics, enjoyment of extra-curricular activities related to physics, physics course anxiety, physics test anxiety, achievement motivation in physics, student motivation in physics, self-efficacy in physics and self-concept in physics. Two causal models explaining the direction of the relationship between these affective characteristics and physics achievement was hypothesized and tested. A questionnaire consisted of 10 sub-dimensions was used in order to determine the affective characteristics of high school students. The achievement scores were obtained by using Ninth Grade Electricity Test developed by the researcher. The Ninth Grade Electricity Test includes 29 items about the electricity concept. The Ninth Grade Electricity Test and the Affective Characteristics Scale were administered to 1457 students in 22 foreign language high schools in Ankara when they start to tenth grade in 2004-2005 academic year. The researcher was the data collector and was present in the class during administration of scale and test. The preliminary analyses were conducted by using Excel and SPSS 10.0 and the confirmatory analysis and testing of the hypothesized structural models were conducted by LISREL 8.30 for Windows. The findings indicated that achievement in physics has a significant effect on high school students&rsquo / affective characteristics. Since, affective characteristics of students are effective on achievement in later years, they should be firmly formed at high school years. Besides, affective characteristics should be improved whether they have an effect on achievement or not, because they have an effect on persistence in from of selection of courses which also may give the chance of being successful in a subject to a student.