The process of supervision in the turkish educational system: purpose, structure, operation

The aim of this study is to provide information on the purposes, structure and operation of the process of supervision in the Turkish educational system. In this paper, the historical development of supervision services in the Turkish educational system, as well as the purposes and principles of educational supervision in Turkey and the structure of supervision in the Turkish educational system are defined. Moreover, the organization of sub-systems of the Ministry of National Education and that of supervision at elementary schools, hiring supervisors, their training, duties and responsibilities as well as working principles are presented. In addition, a detailed analysis of the supervision of institutions and teachers by supervisors is included.     

The pedagogy of argumentation in science education: science teachers’ instructional practices

ABSTRACT

Argumentation has been a prominent concern in science education research and a common goal in science curriculum in many countries over the past decade. With reference to this goal, policy documents burden responsibilities on science teachers, such as involving students in dialogues and being guides in students’ spoken or written argumentation. Consequently, teachers’ pedagogical practices regarding argumentation gain importance due to their impact on how they incorporate this practice into their classrooms. In this study, therefore, we investigated the instructional strategies adopted by science teachers for their argumentation-based science teaching. Participants were one elementary science teacher, two chemistry teachers, and four graduate students, who have a background in science education. The study took place during a graduate course, which was aimed at developing science teachers’ theory and pedagogy of argumentation. Data sources included the participants’ video-recorded classroom practices, audio-recorded reflections, post-interviews, and participants’ written materials. The findings revealed three typologies of instructional strategies towards argumentation. They are named as Basic Instructional Strategies for Argumentation, Meta-level Instructional ?St??rategies for ?Argumentation, and Meta-strategic Instructional ?St??rategies for ?Argumentation. In conclusion, the study provided a detailed coding framework for the exploration of science teachers’ instructional practices while they are implementing argumentation-based lessons.     

Democracy Through Learner-Centered Education: a Turkish Perspective

Aimed at documenting the problems and constraints confronting learner-centered instruction in Turkey, this article first explains the link between democracy and education and the role of learner-centered instruction in realizing democratic ends. By drawing on John Dewey’s ideas and Turkish scholars’ perspectives on Turkish education, the article then presents the problems and constraints that pose threats to the implementation of learner-centered instruction in Turkey. The author also explains the problems within the Turkish educational system and teacher education programmes, and the challenges that in-service teachers and students may experience with learner-centered instruction.     

Crowdsourcing for information retrieval: introduction to the special issue

This introduction to the special issue summarizes and contextualizes six novel research contributions at the intersection of information retrieval (IR) and crowdsourcing (also overlapping crowdsourcing’s closely-related sibling, human computation). Several of the papers included in this special issue represent deeper investigations into research topics for which earlier stages of the authors’ research were disseminated at crowdsourcing workshops at SIGIR and WSDM conferences, as well as at the NIST TREC conference. Since the first proposed use of crowdsourcing for IR in 2008, interest in this area has quickly accelerated and led to three workshops, an ongoing NIST TREC track, and a great variety of published papers, talks, and tutorials. We briefly summarize the area in order to help situate the contributions appearing in this special issue. We also discuss some broader current trends and issues in crowdsourcing which bear upon its use in IR and other fields.     

e-Government adoption model based on theory of planned behavior: Empirical validation

The e-Government phenomenon has become more important with the ever increasing number of implementations worldwide. A model explaining the e-Government adoption and the related measurement instrument – a survey – had been developed and validated in this study. In a post Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) approach, theory of planned behavior (TPB) was extended to fit the requirements of e-Government context. The adoption of student loans service of the higher education student loans and accommodation association of Turkey (KYK) was investigated to obtain data for empirical validation. The instrument was administered to over four-hundred students and partial least squares path modeling was employed to analyze the data. The results indicate that the model was an improvement over TAM in terms of predictive power. The constructs trust, perceived behavioral control and attitudes successfully explained the intention to use an e-Government service. The findings presented in this study provide useful insights for researchers and policy makers when dealing with e-Government services.     

Exploring the factors related to acceptance of evolutionary theory among Turkish preservice biology teachers: Toward a more informative conceptual ecology for biological evolution

In this study, using multiple regression analysis, we aimed to explore the factors related to acceptance of evolutionary theory among preservice Turkish biology teachers using conceptual ecology for biological evolution as a theoretical lens. We aimed to determine the extent to which we can account for the variance in acceptance of evolutionary theory by using understanding of evolutionary theory, epistemological beliefs, thinking dispositions, and parents' educational level as independent variables. Preservice biology teachers' thinking dispositions, their understanding of evolutionary theory, and their parents' educational level are positively correlated with acceptance of evolutionary theory. We did not find any significant positive correlation between epistemological beliefs and acceptance of evolution because of low reliability coefficients of subscales of the epistemological beliefs instrument. Together they explained 10.5% of the variance. These results suggest that studying the relationship between acceptance of evolutionary theory and other related factors in a multivariate context is more informative than examining the relationship between acceptance of evolutionary theory and other factors in isolation. Our findings indicate that studying a controversial issue such as acceptance of evolutionary theory in a multivariate fashion, using conceptual ecology as a theoretical lens to interpret the findings, is informative. Our results suggest the inclusion of thinking dispositions in conceptual ecology for biological evolution. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 45: 420–443, 2008     

Contribution of the laboratory to a diagnosis process by sequential reflective testing: Paraprotein interference on a direct bilirubin assay

Errors in laboratory medicine occur in the preanalytical, analytical, and postanalytical phases. The errors are mostly detected in the preanalytical period. However, analytical errors are still an important source of error, despite their frequency is reduced significantly in years thanks to developments in laboratories. In this case, an analytical error was noticed during the verification of a patient’s results. The direct bilirubin of a 66-year-old male patient admitted to the emergency department was higher than the total bilirubin. The patient’s symptoms were fatigue and dyspnoea. Albumin and haemoglobin (Hb) concentrations of the patient were significantly low. After considering the patient’s demographics and laboratory results, the laboratory specialist suspected a paraproteinemia interference. Total protein was performed as a reflective test. The albumin/globulin ratio was reversed. Thereafter, serum protein electrophoresis (SPEP) and immunofixation electrophoresis (IFE) were performed as another reflective tests, respectively. SPEP and IFE results were in favour of monoclonal gammopathy. The patient was directed to a haematologist, underwent a bone marrow biopsy, and the result was reported as Waldenstrom’s macroglobulinemia with plasma cell differentiation expressing IgM-Kappa. The patient went on a chemotherapy protocol, and his condition has been improved in subsequent months. Detection of analytical errors is of great importance, like in our case, and may be used as a tool to identify patients who have not yet been diagnosed. The laboratory specialist must dominate the entire process of each test in the laboratory, be aware of the limitations of tests, and turn these disadvantages into advantages when necessary.