Psychological modeling of preservice science teachers’ argumentativeness,achievement goals,and epistemological beliefs: a mixed design

European Journal of Psychology of Education - This study was conducted to investigate the relationships among Turkish preservice science teachers’ argumentativeness, epistemological beliefs,...     

Exploring the Role of Trust in Scientists to Explain Health-Related Behaviors in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

The devastating COVID-19 pandemic has cast a light on the question of why trust in scientists is important. This mixed-method study aimed to explore the study participants’ trust in scientists about getting the COVID-19 vaccine. It also aimed to reveal which key sources of information participants followed about the pandemic. Participants’ health-related behaviors and justifications for their behaviors as a response to the pandemic were also explored to understand how trust in scientists and sources of information played a role in the fight against COVID-19. The responses of 1233 participants across Turkey were analyzed. The findings indicated that trust in scientists and compliance with the scientists’ suggested behaviors among the participants were quite high. It was also revealed that, for both trust and non-trust groups, participants questioned the reliability of information and the sources. Participants justified their behaviors mainly by referring to policies, e.g., masks, distance, and hygiene, developed and implemented with the collaboration of government, scientists, and the World Health Organization. Moreover, trust issues regarding scientists, government authorities, or other citizens were mentioned in participants’ justifications. The current study also shed light on the importance of building trust through an open and healthy dialogue among scientists, government authorities, and the public to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic. The study highlighted the need for scientifically informed citizens to deal with the problems, i.e., misinformation and disinformation, in the post-truth era such as not jeopardizing effective solutions to eliminate the pandemic, e.g., taking the vaccine.

     

The effects of a game-enhanced learning intervention on foreign language learning

Educational technology research and development - The rich multimedia-enhanced language content offered by modern commercial off-the-shelf games and students’ interest in playing such games...     

Using Contests to Provide Business Students Project‐Based Learning in Humanitarian Logistics: PSAid Example

Business students appreciate working on classroom projects that are both enjoyable and useful in preparing them for future careers. Promoting competition among project teams is also used as a method to motivate students. The Humanitarian Logistics Project (HLP) teaches undergraduate students the logistical implications of unsolicited material donations in disaster relief. To encourage competition, students are organized into teams of three and tasked with designing humanitarian public service announcements (PSAs) that improve their understanding of humanitarian issues in the general public. These announcements are then submitted to the national PSAid (Public Service Announcements for International Disasters) contest for American college students. The exercise is rigorous because it requires students to collect logistical data and use it to communicate the principle of smart compassion to the public in a creative fashion. Moreover, not only do students learn about topics related to humanitarian logistics by competing with other college students nation‐wide, but also do they make a socially responsible contribution to the public. Analysis of survey data shows that students’ learning outcomes from the HLP are significantly greater than those for other supply chain topics covered in class, and that student satisfaction with the HLP is high.     

Using online peer assessment in an Instructional Technology and Material Design course through social media

This study was designed to investigate the student teachers perceptions about and benefits and challenges of using Facebook as an online peer assessment tool for the student teachers’ works. The study group included 24 student teachers in science education department of a state university located in the southeast region of Turkey. A case study approach of the qualitative method was employed in the research. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect the data. The interviews were audio recorded, and records of all the interviews were transcribed into full text in Turkish. Collected data were analyzed using an emergent coding approach. Codes, then, were categorized to constitute themes and subthemes. The findings indicated that the student teachers were able to give objective feedback on their peers’ work and engaged more actively in class after participating in online peer assessment. Additionally, the students found it exciting and productive to use Facebook as a peer assessment tool in their learning.     

Multicultural Discussion as a Moderator of Counseling Supervision-Related Constructs

International students’ needs and experiences in counseling training and supervision has been an area of interest for several decades; however, there is a lack of research regarding effective approaches for supervising international students. Previous studies concerning the international counseling student population have mainly utilized bivariate analysis, and inconsistent results have been observed among studies examining the same relations, which makes applied implications questionable. More complex analysis to determine the relationships among constructs, which will assist in applied implications, are long needed. Thus, this study was a response to the need to determine if a moderation effect could be observed among key counseling supervision-related variables. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether international counseling supervisees’ perceptions regarding the degree to which the construct of multicultural discussion occurring in their university supervision moderated the relationship among key supervision-related variables, including acculturation, counselor self-efficacy, supervisory working alliance, and role ambiguity in supervision.     

Validation of the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale–Short Form across different age groups in the Turkish context

A short 12-item version of the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale–Short Form (CAAS-SF) was validated across three different age groups in the Turkish context. Scale scores demonstrated adequate to high internal consistency and 4-week test–retest reliability, good fit with the original four-factor model, factorial invariance across gender and age groups, strong convergence with the 24-item version, negative associations with trait anxiety and work stress, and positive associations with career decision self-efficacy. It was concluded that the Turkish version of the CAAS-SF appears to be a valid and reliable measure for assessing career adaptability and using it in career education and counseling process.     

Children’s epistemological views according to their learning centre preferences

The purpose of the study was to investigate children’s epistemological beliefs in terms of their free play preferences in relation to learning centres. The study was conducted with 115 children coming from families with high socio-economic status (54 girls and 61 boys, 57 five years old and 58 six years old) during the 2015/2016 spring semester. The Epistemological Beliefs Scale for Children was administered to each child individually. In addition, all the children were shown pictures of science, drama, music, literacy, painting and mathematic centres prepared by two researchers and asked to choose the one they preferred for play during free time. Each child was interviewed by one researcher and each interview lasted approximately 15–20 minutes. According to the overall results of the study, children’s epistemological views tended to be dogmatic; however, some children thought more sceptically. Furthermore, children had a sophisticated thinking style in certain dimensions of knowledge while having immature reasoning in others. It was also found that the source of knowledge and hypothesising sub-dimensions of epistemological views indicated dogmatic thoughts. On the other hand, children had sceptical thoughts concerning the sub-dimension of change in knowledge.     

Analysis of distributed consensus protocols with multi-equilibria under time-delays

In this paper, we propose a novel method for addressing the multi-equilibria consensus problem for a network of n agents with dynamics evolving in discrete-time. In this method, we introduce, for the first time in the literature, two concepts called primary and secondary layer subgraphs. Then, we present our main results on directed graphs such that multiple consensus equilibria states are achieved, thereby extending the existing single-state consensus convergence results in the literature. Furthermore, we propose an algorithm to determine the number of equilibria for any given directed graph automatically by a computer program. We also analyze the convergence properties of multi-equilibria consensus in directed networks with time-delays under the assumption that all delays are bounded. We show that introducing communication time-delays does not affect the number of equilibria of the given network. Finally, we verify our theoretical results via numerical examples.     

Information retention’s relationships with flow,presence and engagement in guided 3D virtual environments

The purpose of this study was to examine the correlation of different variables with information retention in guided 3D virtual learning environments by employing three experimental designs. In each experiments, different participants were included in the same population and different variables were considered. Information retention test, flow, presence, engagement scales were used as data collection tools. Namely measures of flow, presence and engagement were examined to see their correlation with retention in experiment 1, 2 and 3. As a result, not the total score of flow but focused attention, enjoyment and skill dimensions has a weak but significant correlation with information retention, while the challenge has a moderate and significant negative correlation. In the second experiment, retention had a significant, low-level relationship with teaching presence and cognitive presence, but it did not have a similar relationship with social presence. In the third experiment, information retention significantly correlated with affective and cognitive engagement, but not with behavioral engagement. Although the three studies’ participants were from the same population, It was seen that the differences in the level of relationship between information retention and the variables studied in each study. Nevertheless, it was found that the levels of flow, presence and engagement of students are important for information retention in a guided 3D virtual learning environment. The study is thought to guide researchers to design 3D virtual learning environments for different purposes, considering these variables.