我心目中的教育学

我在《读书》2003年第10期发表了短文《教育学的尴尬》,引来了一些论者公开、私下的支持或批评,被认为表达了我对中国教育学的"不满"、"质疑"、"失望和轻蔑"[1]。我感谢这些论者,他们的评论促使我去反思自己的论述,并启发我进一步去思考中国教育学究竟该何去何从。     

Change in beliefs after first-year of teaching: The case of Turkish national curriculum context

The impact of national curriculum context on mathematics related beliefs of 12 beginning middle grades mathematics teachers was investigated after the teacher education program and first-year teaching through interviews and a combination of three belief frameworks. National curriculum requirements, lack of effective mentoring programs, and preservice tutoring experiences were detected as the major factors impacting beliefs. Participants simultaneously had teacher-centered and student-centered beliefs, causing inconsistency in beliefs and practices. While participants’ preservice and first-year experiences contrasted, they developed contextual beliefs to deal with the difficulties. Reflections on teacher education and beginning teacher support policies in national curriculum contexts were discussed.     

Unpacking the inequality among Turkish schools: Findings from PISA 2006

The study investigates the effects of certain school characteristics on students’ mathematics performances in Turkey in the PISA 2006 while controlling for family background and demographic characteristics. Three models of Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) are constructed. The results reveal that 55% of the variance is attributable to between-schools and the remaining 45% to individual student characteristics. About two-thirds of the 55% is explained by selectivity in admissions, time to study mathematics and students’ SES, gender and the geographical region. The findings are interpreted to explain why Turkish schools differed greatly in average student performance in PISA 2006 by using the conceptual efforts on school quality factors and family background characteristics.     

Comparing active game-playing scores and academic performances of elementary school students

In the educational sciences, many discussions on the use of computer games occur. Most of the scientists believe that traditional computer games are time-consuming software and that game-playing activities negatively affect students’ academic performance. In this study, the accuracy of this general opinion was examined by focusing on the real game-playing scores of an elementary school students in Turkey. First, researchers selected a single-player strategy game. Second, the selected game was given to 105 fifth-grade students, who had not played it before, so that they could play it over a 30-minute period. The most successful student of the group finished the 23rd level of the game and collected 8152 points in total. In order to investigate the correlation between strategy game performance and academic performance, researchers derived the students’ average exam scores for six different courses (mathematics, physical science, science and technology, visual arts, music, and social sciences) from official documents. At the end of the study, it was found that participants’ mathematical or physical science skills were positively correlated with game success; however, a negative relationship was not exists between an individual's computer game success and academic performance.     

Beginning early childhood education teachers’ struggle with inclusion in Turkey

The purpose of this study was to investigate Turkish early childhood education teachers’ perception of inclusion before they started their teaching profession and to explore their experiences with the children with disabilities in their first year of teaching. Sixteen Turkish pre-service teachers were first interviewed when they completed the teacher education programme about their expectations of inclusion practices in their future career. Four participants among the 16 teachers started to teach children with disabilities in their first year of teaching. Then, they were interviewed about their experiences at the end of the first and second semesters of teaching. Findings revealed that Turkish pre-service teachers displayed positive attitudes towards inclusion before they started teaching. However, they had negative experiences with children with disabilities in their first year due to the misimplementation of the inclusion policy and being inexperienced about the inclusion process, and began to question the effectiveness of inclusion. Implications for the inclusion policy and teacher education programmes are discussed.     

3-D scattering of obliquely incident plane p waves by alluvial valley embedded in layered half-space

The indirect boundary element method(IBEM) was established to solve the problem of 3-D seismic responses of 2-D topographies,by calculating the free-field responses with the direct-stiffness method and simulating the scattering wave fields with the dynamic Green’s functions of moving distributed loads.The proposed method yields accurate results,because the 3-D dynamic stiffness matrixes used are exact and the fictitious moving distributed loads can be acted directly on the interface between the alluvial valley and the layered half-space without singularity.The comparison with the published methods verifies the validity of the proposed method.And the numerical analyses are performed to give some beneficial conclusions.The study shows that 3-D scattering by an alluvial valley is essentially different from the 2-D case,and that the presence of soil layer affects not only the amplitude value of surface displacements but also the distribution of surface displacements.     

School Students’ Conceptions about Biodiversity Loss: Definitions, Reasons, Results and Solutions

Environmental degradation stemming from anthropocentric causes threatens the biodiversity more than ever before, leading scholars to warn governments about the impending consequences of biodiversity loss (BL). At this point, it is of great importance to study the public’s conceptions of BL in order to identify significant educational implications. However, a review of the literature reveals a relatively small body of research about the public understanding of BL. In this qualitative study, we thus strived to elicit Turkish school students’ conceptions about BL using a written questionnaire including open-ended questions with respect to the definition of biodiversity as well as reasons for, results of and solutions to BL. The sample consisted of 245 school students in a relatively small city. A two-staged content analysis was run on the responses. The results showed that school students most commonly preferred species-focused definitions of biodiversity and understood BL through such various conceptual patterns as, ‘balance of nature’, ‘forest’, ‘global warming’, ‘hunting’ and ‘indirect conservation’. At the end of the paper, the possible educational implications and future perspectives were discussed.     

Preservice Science Teachers’ Efficacy Regarding a Socioscientific Issue: A Belief System Approach

The aim of the present study was to understand the nature of teaching efficacy beliefs related to a socioscientific issue (SSI). We investigated Turkish preservice science teachers’ teaching efficacy beliefs about genetically modified (GM) foods using a belief system approach. We assumed that preservice teachers’ beliefs about GM foods (content knowledge, risk perceptions, moral beliefs, and religious beliefs) and their teaching efficacy beliefs about this topic constitute a belief system, and these beliefs are interrelated due to core educational beliefs. We used an exploratory mixed design to test this model. We developed and administered specific questionnaires to probe the belief system model. The sample for the quantitative part of this study included 441 preservice science teachers from eight universities. We randomly selected eight participants in this group for follow-up interviews. The results showed that preservice science teachers held moderately high teaching efficacy beliefs. Learning and teaching experiences, communication skills, vicarious experiences, emotional states, and interest in the topic were sources of this efficacy. In addition, content knowledge and risk perceptions were predictors of teaching efficacy. We believe that epistemologies based on traditional teaching and the values attached to science teaching are the core beliefs that affect the relationship between predictor variables and teaching efficacy.