R&D support programs in developing countries: The Turkish experience

In this study, the determinants of private R&D investment are examined at the level of firms in the Turkish manufacturing industry. We focus our attention on the effect of public R&D support programs. Our findings indicate that public R&D support significantly and positively affects private R&D investment. There seems to be even an “acceleration effect” on firm-financed R&D expenditures. Smaller R&D performers benefit more from R&D support and perform more R&D. In addition, technology transfer from abroad and domestic R&D activity show up as complementary processes. Given the scarcity of studies on R&D support in technologically weaker economies, our hope is that the less-developed countries can exploit these findings in constructing socially beneficial technology policies.     

Teachers’ views on the effectiveness of in‐service courses on the new curriculum in Turkey

This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of in‐service courses conducted by the Ministry of National Education in order to inform teachers about the changes introduced by the new primary and secondary school curricula. The study also aims to reveal whether these changes have entered the classrooms based on the teachers’ views of the INSET courses they attended. For this purpose, semi‐structured interviews were conducted with both primary and secondary school teachers during the 2007–2008 academic year. Data were analysed based on the effective INSET criteria identified from the literature. According to the findings, the INSET courses were found to be ineffective, mainly in terms of the quality of the instructors, teaching methods employed, duration of the courses and support after training. Suggestions to conduct effective INSET courses, especially when change is afoot, are included at the end of this paper.     

Modelling between epistemological beliefs and constructivist learning environment

The purpose of this study was to model the relationship between pre-service chemistry teachers’ epistemological beliefs and their preference to use constructivist-learning environment in their future class. The sample was 125 pre-service chemistry teachers from five universities in Turkey. Two instruments were used in this study. One of the instruments was constructivist-learning environment scale developed by Taylor, Fraser and Fisher. The other instrument was Epistemological Questionnaire (EQ) developed by Schommer. In order to analyse data, Structural Equation Modelling was conducted by using LISREL 8.7. The results provided evidence for the good fit of the hypothesised model. Pre-service chemistry teachers’ epistemological belief scores were found to be correlated to their constructivist-learning environment scale scores with the value of .35. This study revealed that pre-service chemistry teachers with sophisticated epistemological beliefs favoured constructivist-learning environment in their future class.     

Facilitating Conceptual Change in Gases Concepts

The aim of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of conceptual change oriented instruction (CCOI) over traditionally designed chemistry instruction (TDCI) on overcoming 10th grade students’ misconceptions on gases concepts. In addition, the effect of gender difference on students’ understanding of gases concepts was investigated. The subjects of this study consisted of 74 10th grade students from two chemistry classes. One of the classes was assigned as experimental group and the other group was assigned as control group. The experimental group was instructed with CCOI and the control group was instructed by TDCI. Gases Concept Test (GCT) was administered to both groups as pre- and post-tests to measure the students’ conceptual understanding. The results showed that students in the experimental group got higher average scores from Gases Concept Test. Also, a significant difference was found between the performance of females and that of males in terms of understanding gases concepts in favor of males.     

Enhanced speed control of a DC servo system using PI + DF controller tuned by stochastic fractal search technique

Since Proportional?+?Integral?+?Derivative (PID) controller is still the workhorse in taking over the workload of process control systems, this article introduces a new design methodology toward improving the performance of such controller. After a PI control law with windup protection is given, it is combined with a derivative path employing a first-order low pass filter in an innovative way to develop a performant controller called PI?+?DF controller. In attempting to attain a high level of control performance, gains of this controller including proportional, integral, derivative and filter gains are tuned choosing the recently introduced Stochastic Fractal Search (SFS) algorithm owing to its superiority to many state-of-the-art algorithms considering convergence, accuracy and robustness. To evaluate the efficacy of SFS, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is also applied to the case study. Furthermore, the presented SFS optimized PI?+?DF controller is compared to a recently reported control scheme through simulation and experimental tests on an identical DC servo system. After providing the stability proof, SFS tuned PI?+?DF controller is found to be the pioneer in exhibiting the most accurate speed response profile under complicated scenarios, which is followed by PSO tuned PI?+?DF controller and the existing control approach, respectively.     

Use of handwriting recognition technologies in tablet-based learning modules for first grade education

Learning through modules on a tablet helps students participate effectively in learning activities in classrooms and provides flexibility in the learning process. This study presents the design and evaluation of an application that is based on handwriting recognition technologies and e-content for the developed learning modules. The application aims to support the handwriting learning process in first grade and provides an efficient interface to the learning modules through the natural form of handwriting input. The learning modules consist of handwriting and arithmetic modules, which were deemed to benefit most from the use of handwriting recognition technologies. The developed e-content was designed to be used in the evaluations of the developed application, rather than being a complete set of exercises. Among the main findings were that the majority of the children in the two evaluations were visibly motivated to use the application for doing exercises and preferred using the tablet over pen–paper, while teachers were concerned about the extra work associated with preparing questions in the new medium. Reflections from the design of the application and students’ and teachers’ perceptions and teachers’ observations in two separate evaluations are presented with related recommendations.     

Meta-Representation in an Algebra I Classroom

We describe how 1 Algebra I teacher and her 8th-grade students used meta-representational knowledge when generating and evaluating equations to solve word problems. Analyzing data from a sequence of 4 lessons, we found that the teacher and her students used criteria for evaluating equations, in addition to other types of knowledge (e.g., different interpretations of the equal sign) previously reported in the literature. Moreover, the teacher and her students had trouble understanding one another's proposed algebraic models of problem situations due to differences in the criteria that each applied, and this impeded learning. These findings (a) extend an accumulating body of evidence for the role meta-representation plays in mathematics and science learning and (b) add a new dimension to researchers' growing understanding of what teachers must know in order to teach algebra and other complex mathematics and science topics effectively.