Emotional intelligence and negative feelings: a gender specific moderated mediation model

This study aims to clarify the effect of emotional intelligence (EI) on negative feelings (stress, anxiety, burnout and depression) in a gender specific model. Four hundred and twenty-five primary school teachers (326 males, 99 females) completed the measures of EI, stress, anxiety, burnout and depression. The multi-group analysis was performed using a structural equation approach. The moderated mediation results show that there are gender related differences in the relationships of age, emotional intelligence, stress, anxiety, burnout and depression. The results imply that school managers should take into consideration the teachers’ personal variables such as gender and age in order to assess the use of emotional intelligence in coping with negative feelings at the place of work effectively.     

Pre‐service elementary teachers’ beliefs about use of the Internet in the social studies classroom

The Internet has become one of the most common instructional tools because of recent developments in telecommunications and Internet technology. Accordingly, educators increasingly support the use of the Internet in the social studies classroom. Thus, the purpose of this study was to investigate pre‐service elementary teachers’ beliefs about the use of the Internet in the social studies classroom. Data were collected through an open‐ended questionnaire from 37 pre‐service elementary teachers in a large Turkish university. An inductive analysis approach was used to analyse the data. Thus, the emergent patterns of the data were used to develop coding categories. The data analysis indicated that the majority of the participants supported the use of the Internet in the social studies classroom, while they acknowledged the disadvantages and negative aspects of the use of the Internet.     

The Effectiveness of Mime‐Based Creative Drama Education for Exploring Gesture‐Based User Interfaces

User interfaces that utilise human gestures as input are becoming increasingly prevalent in diverse computing applications. However, few designers possess the deep insight, awareness and experience regarding the nature and usage of gestures in user interfaces to the extent that they are able to exploit the technological affordances and innovate over them. We argue that design students, who will be expected to envision and create such interactions in the future, are constrained as such by their habits that pertain to conventional user interfaces. Design students should gain an understanding of the nature of human gestures and how to use them to add value to UI designs. To this end, we formulated an ‘awareness course’ for design students based on concepts derived from mime art and creative drama. We developed the course iteratively through the involvement of three groups of students. The final version of the course was evaluated by incorporating the perspectives of design educators, an industry expert and the students. We present the details of the course, describe the development process, and discuss the insights revealed by the evaluations.     

Evaluation of Serum Fetuin-A and Osteoprotegerin Levels in Patients with Psoriasis

Psoriasis patients are determined to have a high ratio of coronary artery calcification. Fetuin-A and osteoprotegerin are systemic calcification inhibitors and related to vascular calcification and cardiovascular mortality. In this study we investigated the relationship between fetuin-A and osteoprotegerin levels in psoriasis patients. The study included 40 healthy volunteers and 40 psoriasis patients. Venous blood were collected from healthy volunteers and psoriasis patients in order to search the fetuin-A and osteoprotegerin levels. Disease severity were grouped as mild, moderate and severe according to psoriasis area and severity index (PASI). The relationship between fetuin-A and osteoprotegerin levels and clinical features as sex, PASI and presence of psoriatic arthritis were analyzed. Fetuin-A levels in psoriasis patients were statistically lower than the control group (p < 0.001). In serum osteoprotegerin levels, no statistically significant difference was found in two groups (p > 0.05). Serum fetuin-A and osteoprotegerin level differences were not statistically significant between patients with psoriatic arthritis history and those without. When we grouped patients in respect of their sexes fetuin-A and osteoprotegerin levels of males and females were not significantly different (p > 0.05). No correlation was detected between the ages and PASI scores and the fetuin-A and osteoprotegerin levels of patients. As a result fetuin-A levels in psoriasis patients are found to be low but not related to disease severity. In the light of our results we concluded that fetuin-A may have a role in psoriasis pathogenesis and may contribute to the calcification process developed in psoriasis.     

Evaluating the potential effect of the increased importance of the impact component in the Research Excellence Framework of the UK

The UK's Research Excellence Framework (REF) is a system that is intended to evaluate the quality of the research produced by higher education institutes (HEIs) in the UK in three areas: quality of research outputs; impact of this research beyond academia; and research environment. For the next REF, the funding bodies have reviewed the importance of the three assessment elements and decided to increase the weight of ‘impact’ to 25% (from 20% in REF2014) and decrease the weight of ‘outputs’ to 60% (from 65% in REF2014). This article first examines the relevance of some factors for the quality of impact submissions in REF2014 and finds that larger submissions and institutes with higher external research income received better impact scores in the REF. The article then examines the units of assessment (UoAs) and HEIs that benefitted from the inclusion of the impact agenda as part of REF2014 by examining the distribution of the quality-related research (QR) funding in the 2017–2018 period and finds that the QR funding gap among different UoAs tends to decrease but the gap among HEIs in most of the UoAs increased. With the increased importance of the impact agenda as a criterion for funding bodies, it is expected that research income will be concentrated in fewer universities in the future, with the increased importance of non-academic impact. This article also discusses some of the gaming strategies and long-term investment priorities that HEIs may engage in based on the new submission rules of the next REF.     

The mediating roles of internal context variables in the relationship between distributed leadership perceptions and continuous change behaviours of public school teachers

This study aims at building a theoretical base for continuous change in education and using this base to test the mediating roles of two key contextual variables, knowledge sharing and trust, in the relationship between the distributed leadership perceptions and continuous change behaviours of teachers. Data were collected from 687 public school teachers. The results showed that the combined effect of knowledge sharing and faculty trust in principal mediated the relationship between teachers’ distributed leadership perceptions and continuous change behaviours. The directions of the coefficients of the relationships between the independent variable and the dependent variable suggested that higher distributed leadership perception leads to increased knowledge sharing and trust in principal, which in turn was associated with greater continuous change behaviours. The study showed that school systems have an extensive capacity for self-improvement, even in the absence of a pre-developed change plan.     

Professional competences to teach English at primary schools in Turkey: a Delphi study

This research aimed to uncover the teacher competences that are necessary to provide age-appropriate English language teaching to primary school students in Turkey. The Delphi technique was implemented to propose a list of competences created through consensus among a panel of experts that consisted of 15 teachers and 16 teacher educators. The data were collected by administering three questionnaires in three rounds. Central tendency and consensus were measured through median and inter-quartile range, respectively. The findings led to a list of 29 teacher competences which were categorised into five groups: ‘theoretical and practical knowledge’, ‘knowing the young learner’, ‘planning and organising teaching’, ‘managing teaching’, and ‘competence in English’. Implications were made for improving the effectiveness of English language teaching to young learners: these included the design of pre-service and in-service teacher education programmes to equip teachers with the necessary skills and knowledge to teach English to young learners.     

Interaction between seed size and NaCl on germination and early seedling growth of some Turkish cultivars of chickpea （Cicer arietinum L.）

Chickpea is an important food legume crop of Turkey and is largely grown for human consumption on low moisture or salt-affected soils.The objective of the study was to find the effects of NaCl stress at electrical conductivities of 4.5,8.6,12.7 and 16.3 dS/m and seed sizes (7,8 and 9 mm) on germination and early seedling growth of three popular chickpea cultivars (AKN-97,Gokce and Uzunlu-99).Mean frequency of germination,germination time,germination index,root length,shoot length and seedling fresh weight showed seed size-dependent responses of cultivars to salt stress.In general,small seeds germinated and grew more rapidly compared to medium and large seeds of the same cultivars against all levels of salt stress,with the best results in cultivar Uzunlu-99.No effect of NaCl treatments was observed on frequency of germination; however,a drastic decrease in early seedling growth was recorded at increased NaCl concentrations.Regression analysis results showed a significantly positive rela-tionship (P<0.01) between seed size and mean germination time,whereas a significantly negative relationship was recorded between seed size and germination index,root length,shoot length.Moreover,linear regression values apparently confirmed that increased seed size in each cultivar affected decreased germination index,root and shoot lengths with enhanced mean germination time.Thus,it was concluded that the use of small seeds could considerably reduce the production costs of chickpea in salt-affected soils.     

Polynomial solution of high-order linear Fredholm integro-differential equations with constant coefficients

In this study, a practical matrix method is presented to find an approximate solution of high-order linear Fredholm integro-differential equations with constant coefficients under the initial-boundary conditions in terms of Taylor polynomials. The method converts the integro-differential equation to a matrix equation, which corresponds to a system of linear algebraic equations. Error analysis and illustrative examples are included to demonstrate the validity and applicability of the technique.