Effectiveness of the REACT Strategy on 12th Grade Students’ Understanding of the Alkenes Concept

Background: The context-based approach (CBA) is one of the approaches that allow learning to take place with real and related context, and this has increasingly become more popular.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of the REACT strategy of the CBA on remedying 12th grade students’ alternative conceptions of ‘alkenes’ and improving their conceptual understanding.

Sample: The sample of the study consisted of 20 (10 girls and 10 boys – aged 17 to 18 years) 12th grade students who enrolled in the Chemistry course in the 2014–2015 academic year in a public high school.

Design and methods: Since the current study evaluated student gains in conceptual understanding by means of a pre-test, post-test, and delayed-test scores, the study used a single group pre-posttest research design. To gather data, an Alkenes Concept Test (ACT) with 15 multiple choice items and a semi-structured interview protocol with 4 open-ended questions were used. The ACT was administered before and after the intervention as pre- and post-tests. Then, the semi-structured interview protocol was carried out. The ACT was re-administered third time to the students as a delayed-test one month after the intervention.

Results: The results showed that the REACT strategy was effective to remedy the alternative conceptions and helped students to keep new conceptions in their long-term memory one month after the implementation.

Conclusions: The REACT strategy was effective in enhancing conceptual understanding of ‘alkenes’ and helping 12th grade students to link between the scientific concepts and daily life.     

School principals’ evaluations of their instructional leadership behaviours: realities vs. ideals

The purpose of the current study was to examine primary and middle school principals’ evaluations of their own instructional leadership behaviours, and thereby pay closer attention to the ideal instructional leadership behaviours suggested in the related literature and the realities of principals’ instructional leadership behaviours. Although studies in the instructional leadership literature have vastly examined instructional leadership and its relationship with various variables, few studies have focused on school principals’ evaluations of their instructional leadership behaviours using a qualitative approach. This study was framed to contribute to gain an insight into the essential characteristics of instructional leadership in Turkey and to suggest some educational implications for school leadership in a Turkish context. The researchers conducted a qualitative case study in a large city in South-eastern Turkey in the academic year of 2012–2013. The study group consisted of 11 primary and middle school principals chosen via a maximum variation sampling technique. It was found that some of the school principals painstakingly tried to improve school-related factors which may potentially increase positive student outcomes. However, they were not able to display some instructional leadership behaviours such as change management, promoting teachers’ professional growth, collaborating with teachers and forming a positive learning environment due to multifarious reasons. The study concludes by presenting implications for the development of school principals as instructional leaders in Turkey.     

Exploring student perceptions and experiences of different teaching and learning approaches in architectural history education: a comparative case study

Learning Environments Research - The purpose of the current research was to investigate the perceptions and experiences of university students regarding three different teaching and learning...     

On the Ruled surfaces in Minkowski 3-space R1^3

INTRODUCTIONLet ú3={(x1,x2,x3)|x1,x2,x3∈ú} be a 3D vector space, x=(x1,x2,x3) and y=(y1,y2,y3) be two vectors in ú3. The pseudo scalar product of x and y is defined by