In this study, the attitude of 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students towards “Science and Technology” lesson, studying at junior schools of the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus are compared to the opinions of teachers on the attitude of students towards the above mentioned lesson. Science and technology teaching does not only contribute to students acquiring cognitive behaviors, but it also contributes to acquiring affective behaviors. For an individual to acquire cognitive behaviors related to a field of science, he or she needs to have positive feelings, interest, and behaviors towards that field. Literature shows that introductory characteristics like interest and attitude have a substantial contribution to success in a cognitive sense. In this context, the study compares the attitudes of 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students towards Science and Technology lesson, and the opinions of teachers on the attitudes of students. For gathering data, the ‘Attitude Scale towards Science and Technology Lesson’ developed in the 2008-2009 academic year was used for students. For the opinion of teachers on the attitudes of students, a structured interview form was used. Attitude Scale towards Science and Technology Lesson has 2 factors. As a result of the analysis of basic components, first and second factor powers change between .882 and .310, and factors explain 54% of total variant. The inner consistency quotient of the scale (Cronbach Alfa) is .92, and the equal two parts reliability is .91. Descriptive scanning model was used in the study. In order to contribute to future teaching of Science and Technology, the study proposes a new Science and Technology Teaching Program and the updating of textbooks based on this program.
The place and importance of art education is great within a planned training program. Considering the contribution of an individual's personality development, it can be better understood the necessity and importance of the quality. Targeted to be trained the individuals developed the visual perception with art education, self-expression, creative, exploratory, productive, environment-sensitive transducer and recognizing learning ,protecting the culture in which he lives and handing down the next generations, being respectful the world's cultural heritage and being constructive. By improving their confidence during the child's learning period, it contributes to her/his academic success. Art teaches how they could solve the problems by improving the imagination and creativity of children. If developed with together the ability to reflect the truth and the fact beginning to develop in his/her school years and the interest to art observed in little child , but then the art education takes no hesitation at all ages, the art is never interrupted. Wrong attitudes of families, other branch teachers, class masters and administrators cause to be detected as an education required only for talented students and just a leisure activity, a discharge area for the visual arts course. This situation leads to the idea of not being as important as the other subjects within the curriculum. This idea being common leads to be reacted normally the use of the study area of the other courses when the visual arts course is done. The artistic development in the child's development process is ignored and paid no attention. The curriculum of the art education and its dimensions such as teachers, student and media must be complete and the desired level. In case of the failure of one of these, it can be said that the goals will not be reached. The most important condition of being efficient and fitting the purpose of the art education is that the visual arts teacher who has been trained in this area should handle to this course. The classroom teachers enter to the visual arts course in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th classrooms of primary school. The courses for the training of the visual arts within the license training of the classroom teachers include the courses which are 2 credits of art education in the fourth semester and again 2 credits of visual arts teaching in the seventh semester. This period is not sufficient to have enough theoretical and practice-based and the experience and equipment for visual arts of classroom teacher. Because the visual arts course has a method rich and technical means and their use in teaching requires to do al lot of practice on this respect. In the field of application, if especially classroom teachers exhibit a negative and unstable attitude as the subject, tools, equipment, technique and method in education and training of the visual arts, this case causes not to materialize of the goals of course. All control and management staffs, teachers, parents and especially classrooms teachers should accept and adopt that this course is a teaching which has its own characteristics. Otherwise, it can lead to the idea that the picturing is a ability work for the classroom teachers. Furthermore, the picturing evokes the opinion that success in teaching is possible with the talent and expertise. Among the reasons this view, it is due to the idea of needed to make pictures under the photo-realistic of child or as an adult. This clearly means that the child extract from childness, and this is contrary to the nature of the child. It brings together not to understand to the child and being indifference to the interests and wishes. Although the child goes willingly and deliberately to the school, if he/she is forced to paint a certain type, it causes to return frustratedly and leaved the picturing .For this reason, the visual arts course; should keep the values of childness and must take advantage of. her/his development processes conditions. As a result, due to the need to be continuous of the visual arts course; this course must be conducted by the visual arts training teachers trained in this field instead of classroom teachers enter to the visual arts course in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th classrooms of primary school. Art education teached for its purpose for healthy and successful communities consisting of individuals completed personal training is mandatory.
The employment of active learning in classroom management, which centers individual and values the selfcreation in educational process, and the effect of this method on students have been analysed in this study. As the method of the study, action research procedure of qualitative research method is employed.
The acquired-data of the study have been analysed by SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) for Windows 17.0 programme. The descriptive norms ( numbers, percentages) are used during the process of data evaluation. In the comparison of quantitative data, in order to identify the differences between two groups t-test was used and for more than two groups one way anova test was used to compare parameters between groups. The findings out of the study are interpreted in %95 confidence interval and %5 level of significance.
It has been ascertained that the students expressed a positive opinion about the necessity of active learning method in the classroom management. Moreover, it is also cleared up that active learning makes a major contribution in academic success.
Multiple Intelligences Theory (MIT) has significant implications for educational performance, because it changes our perception of intelligence and academic achievement in the learning world. Traditionally learners are taught as if they are all the same without any regard to their unique learning needs or differing learning profiles. While Gardner’s theory lit a candle for a new conceptualization about intelligence and academic abilities, it is far from achieving a widespread popularity in the traditional language classroom. More scholarly explorations are necessary to introduce its promises and potential in the English language teaching world. An example is shared from the School of Foreign Languages at the University of Mediterranean Karpasia. An experimental MIT approach is utilized in an elementary language class in the School of Foreign Languages. This paper integrated three steps in its research. First, key literature review on MIT is introduced highlighting Howard Gardner as the founder of MIT. Then, results of content analysis for two random units from the course book are shared to get a general idea about MIT practice in an elementary language class. Lastly, an innovative teaching praxis tried in an elementary language class. This innovative MIT approach is discussed to determine the future research areas to explore and further investigate the phenomenon which will inform language teaching practices.
In this study, it is intended to compare contracted and permanent primary school teacher’s levels of organizational commitment with regard to the commitment to school, to teaching works, to occupations and to colleagues. This study was conducted on a total of 757 primary school teachers, 610 of which were permanent teachers and 147 were contracted teachers who work in Amasya province and its districts in the academic year 2009- 2010. Celep’s (2000) ‘Teachers' Multidimensional Organizational Commitment Scale’ was used for the collection of data on the study. The scale is developed to measure teachers’ organizational commitment at educational organizations and it consists of 28 items which were divided into four dimensions including commitment to school (9 items), commitment to teaching occupation (7 items),, commitment to teaching work (6 items), commitment to work group (6 items). The construct validity of this scale was assessed by factorial analysis. For construct validity of scale, it is observed that items load highly on four factors as a result of the rotation procedures with factor analysis. To determine the reliability of the scale, first of all it is computed discrimination coefficients of 28 items as a onedimensional. The coefficient of internal consistency was determined for both one dimension and each factor. In the organizational commitment scale of educational organizations, a total of 28 items have reliability coefficients of .88. Cronbach's alpha coefficient is computed .80 in the dimension (or factor) of commitment to school, .75 in Commitment to Teaching Occupation, .78 in Commitment to Teaching Work and .81 in Commitment to Work Group. ANOVA, t-test was used for data analysis and the Levene test is to assess the equality of variances. The results with P <0.05 were considered as statistically significant.
According to the results of the analysis, the organizational commitment points of the 610 permanent teachers was 107.93, and the average answers given to the questions was 3,9 and the organizational commitment points of the contracted teachers was 104.66 and the average answers given to the questions was 3,7. When examined separately, the views given by the permanent teachers to organizational commitment was “little” and “from time to time” level, and the contracted teachers responded as “little”. According to this a difference at p<0.05 level was observed between the permanent teachers and the contracted teachers in respect to organizational commitment level in primary schools. (p=0.04). The difference is statistically significant in favour of permanent teachers. The permanent teachers’ level of commitment to Teaching Work ( :4.22) turned out to be lower than that of the contracted teachers.
The permanent teachers’ level of commitment to school ( : 3.46), was higher than that of the contracted teachers ( :3, 23). The permanent teachers’ level of commitment to work group ( : 3, 75), was found to be higher than that of the contracted teachers. ( :3, 42). Also, permanent teachers’ the average point of commitment to teaching occupation was 4.13 while contracted teachers’ the average point of commitment to teaching occupation was 4.05. Additionally, it was examined whether level of organizational commitment change in terms of the variables such as gender, seniority, and the branch.
Consequently, it is concluded that the employment of equally qualified personnel under different statuses creates discrimination, and that this situation adversely affects their Organizational Commitment Levels and therefore, it can be said that this application should be avoided.
Keywords: Organizational Commitment, Permanent Teacher, Contracted Teacher, Multi Dimensions of Commitment, Primary School.