Examining the structure of vocational interests in Turkey in the context of the personal globe model

The structural validity of the Personal Globe Inventory-Short (PGI-S: Tracey in J Vocat Behavi 76:1–15, 2010) was examined in a Turkish sample of high school and university students. The PGI-S measures eight basic interest scales, Holland’s (Making vocational choice, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1997) six types, Prediger’s (J Vocat Behav 21:259–287, 1981) people/things, data/ideas dimensions, and prestige. After adapting the original PGI-S items into Turkish (PGI-S-T), the inventory was administered to high school students (N = 605) and university students (N = 359). The fit of Holland’s RIASEC and the PGI eight type model were examined separately using the randomization test of hypothesized order relations. Results indicated a strong fit for both the eight type and the RIASEC model. Expected significant differences were found between PGI-S-T subscales across gender and age. The results support the structural validity of the adapted PGI-S-T in a Turkish sample.     

Turkish School Counselors and Counselor Educators’ Perceptions about Multicultural Counseling

This paper examines the topic of multicultural counseling in Turkey, where school-based multicultural counseling services remain comparatively limited in scope and application. Participants consisted of twenty-three counselors working in secondary or high schools and fourteen counselor educators from several state universities. While the participants expressed mostly positive attitudes towards multicultural counseling, school counselors tended to regard it only as a client-focused, acculturation process. Not unexpectedly, counselor educators approached the process mainly in terms of how to effectively apply it toward various minority groups in Turkey.     

Changes in Pre-service Science Teachers’ Understandings After Being Involved in Explicit Nature of Science and Socioscientific Argumentation Processes

The study explored the changes in pre-service science teachers’ understanding of the nature of science and their opinions about the nature of science, science teaching and argumentation after their participation in explicit nature of science (NOS) and socioscientific argumentation processes. The participants were 56 third-grade pre-service science teachers studying in a state university in Turkey. The treatment group comprised 27 participants, and there were 29 participants in the comparison group. The comparison group participants were involved in a student-centred science-teaching process, and the participants of the treatment group were involved in explicit NOS and socioscientific argumentation processes. In the study, which lasted a total of 11 weeks, a NOS-as-argumentation questionnaire was administered to all the participants to determine their understanding of NOS at the beginning and end of the data collection process, and six random participants of the treatment group participated in semi-structured interview questions in order to further understand their views regarding NOS, science teaching and argumentation. Qualitative and quantitative data analysis revealed that the explicit NOS and socioscientific argumentation processes had a significant effect on pre-service science teachers’ NOS understandings. Furthermore, NOS, argumentation and science teaching views of the participants in the treatment group showed a positive change. The results of this study are discussed in light of the related literature, and suggestions are made within the context of contribution to science-teaching literature, improvement of education quality and education of pre-service teachers.     

The number zero: preschool teachers’ perceptions and teaching practices: a Turkish sample

Children's intuitive understanding of numbers begins early in life, and their numbers-related knowledge influences instructors’ teaching practices. The number zero is more difficult to teach and learn than other numbers. The purpose of this study was to investigate how preschool teachers perceive the number zero and design their teaching practices for it. The participants in this case study were selected through convenience sampling. The findings indicated that the majority of the participating preschool teachers perceived the number zero as a symbol and considered children's age while developing teaching practices.     

Social stratification of culture and leisure in Turkey

Using three sets of survey data, this article explores the variations and social bases of leisure and cultural consumption patterns during the last decade in Turkey. In particular, this article explores the social basis of reading habits of daily newspapers, magazines and journals, going out to movies and the theatre, as well as spending patterns on these and various other cultural activities. Questions addressed in this study are: how are culture and leisure consumptions stratified in contemporary Turkish society, and what types of changes can be detected between 1994 and 2004? In summary, the data indicate that leisure and cultural consumption tend to be stratified by educational and income level and, to some extent, white-collar occupations. Second, households with female heads tended to engage more in “highbrow” consumption, compared to households with male heads.     

Les Disparités d'alphabétisation et de scolarisation en Turquie

The struggle against illiteracy is a problem of great importance in Turkey as in many other countries. In Turkey the democratisation and secularisation of education have been a difficult process. Despite strong educational efforts in recent years, the country still presents various forms of inequality, such as considerable disparities between women and men, between town and country and between different regions. Unequal socio-economic, cultural and educational development, and attachment to cultural traditions are some of the factors that influence these inequalities. At the same time, Turkey is confronted by the sore problem of the education of linguistic minorities (especially the Kurds), who are not officially recognised as the cultural policy of Turkey aims to assimilate them. Thus, in the 1920s the Kurdish language was forbidden along with all languages other than Turkish, the official national language.