This study mainly aims to determine the effect of the layered curriculum on the 6th grade students’ learning styles in science lesson. The study group consists of students in the 6/A and 6/D at Fevzi Cakmak Secondary School in the city center of Siirt-Turkey in the academic year of 2015-2016. “Learning Styles Inventory” developed by Kolb and translated into Turkish by Askar and Akkoyunlu, diaries of students and semi-structured interview form developed by researchers and examination of the documents were used as data collection tools. As for data analysis, percent (%) and chi-square techniques were used to determine the learning styles of students, but in the analysis of students’ opinions the descriptive analysis was used. During the study, students were also asked to express their experiences and considerations about learning activities via a diary. The thoughts and feelings reflected in the diaries of students were directly quoted in findings. As a result of the analysis, in pre-test results of the students in the experimental group exposed to the layered curriculum, a significant difference was found in terms of gender; however, no significant difference was found in their post-test results.

This study describes the development and validation of a psychometrically-sound instrument, the Active Learning Strategies Inventory (ALSI), designed to measure learners’ perceptions of their active learning strategies within an active learning context. Active learning encompasses a broad range of pedagogical practices and instructional methods that connect with an individual learner's active learning strategies. In order to fulfill the study's goals, a conceptual framework on learners’ active learning strategies was developed and proposed, drawing upon the research literature on active learning. The development and construct validation of the Active Learning Strategies Inventory (ALSI), based on the conceptual and methodological underpinnings, involved identifying five scales of learners’ active learning strategies: engagement, cognitive processing, orientation to learning, readiness to learn and motivational orientation. An item pool of 20 items was generated following an extensive review of the literature, standardized card sorting procedures including confirmatory factor analysis and scale validation of a pilot (n = 407) survey. The ALSI scale demonstrated strong internal consistency and reliability with a Cronbach's alpha ranging from 0.81 to 0.87. High item loading scores from the factor analysis provided initial support for the instrument's construct validity of the five-factor model. The ALSI scale provides a reliable and valid method for researchers and academicians who wish to measure learners' perceptions of their active learning strategies within an active learning context. Finally, we discuss the implications and address the limitations and directions for future research.

The purpose of the current study is to determine pre-service teachers’ perception of individual entrepreneurship and opinions about their critical thinking tendency. As the data collection tools, the Individual Entrepreneurship Perception Scale and the Marmara Creative Thinking Tendencies Scale were used in the current study. The participants of the study are 469 freshman, sophomore, junior and senior students attending the Departments of Pre-school Teacher Education and Primary School Teacher Education. In the analysis of the collected data, frequencies, percentages, independent samples t-test, Mann Whitney U test and correlation analysis were employed. The findings obtained from the analyses have revealed that the pre-service teachers’ individual entrepreneurship perceptions and creative thinking tendencies vary significantly depending on the variables of gender and whether they took a course/seminar on entrepreneurship. The pre-service teachers’ individual entrepreneurship perceptions and creative thinking tendencies were found to be not varying significantly depending on the department attended. The pre-service teachers’ personal entrepreneurship perceptions and creative thinking tendencies were found to be above medium. A highly positive and significant correlation was found between the pre-service teachers’ individual entrepreneurship perception and creative thinking tendency total scores. The pre-service teachers can be encouraged to take the course “Economics and Entrepreneurship” and to participate in certificate programs on entrepreneurship.

The aim of this study is to identify whether high school students encounter any difficulties in mathematics and reveal the reasons for such difficulties. The participants of the study, which was a descriptive case study based on qualitative understanding, were a total of 164 students, including 85 students from Anatolian High Schools and 79 students from Science High Schools. Approximately 11% of the participants said they had no difficulties in math, whereas 99% of the students from Anatolian High Schools and 78% of the students from Science High Schools said they had difficulties in mathematic. Their thoughts about the reasons for such difficulties were analyzed by content analysis method considering the type of high school they attended. The findings obtained revealed that the difficulties encountered by the participants in mathematics were teacher-, content- and student-based. Anatolian High School students stated that they intensely faced teacher-based difficulties, whereas Science High School students stated that they faced content-based difficulties. It's expected that the results of this study may contribute to studies to be conducted to increase student success in mathematics education and provide ideas for further studies.

The early phase is the decisive period for the teachers’ career. Intellectual styles (particularly thinking styles) play a vital role in teachers’ professional development. With the purpose of measuring thinking styles of teachers at the early phase, this study was designed to validate a revised inventory of thinking styles (TSI-R2) for pre-service and early career teachers. A sample of pre-service teachers (n = 248) were invited to join the pilot study and a sample of teachers with one year work experience (n = 252) participated in the main study. Exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and reliability analysis were performed. The results suggested that with slight modification, TSI-R2 was a reliable and valid instrument to measure thinking styles of pre-service teachers and early career teachers, which has some implications to enhancing teacher education and development.

Corresponding to industry trends and changes in engineering education accreditation criteria, non-technical professional skills training is now seen as central to baccalaureate engineering education. Beyond simply developing good managers in the engineering fields, engineering educators have adopted a goal to prepare engineering students to be leaders who can provide vision to their organizations with strong ethical standards. This study investigated engineering undergraduate students’ leadership efficacy development associated with such professional skills as self-awareness, global competence, ethical awareness, creativity, and teamwork skills. Responding to an online survey, 247 engineering undergraduates who were enrolled in an engineering leadership course participated in this study. Results of this study indicated that there are positive associations among the five professional skills (e.g., self-awareness, ethical awareness, global competency, creativity, and teamwork skills), and engineering leadership self-efficacy for engineering undergraduate students. The five professional skills (self-awareness, ethical awareness, global competency, creativity, and teamwork skills) predicted 54% of the overall variance of engineering leadership self-efficacy.

The purpose of this qualitative research is to analyze the reflective thinking process of prospective elementary teacher in numeracy problems in terms of their mathematical disposition. The subjects in this study were 26 prospective elementary school teachers who had attended elementary mathematics lectures. The focus in this research is the process of mathematical reflective thinking in solving story problems of a two-variable linear equation system in terms of the level of mathematical disposition. The research instrument consisted of a disposition questionnaire, a reflective thinking ability test and the researcher himself as the main instrument. Good mathematical reflective thinking skills are supported by disposition, by constantly monitoring one's own performance, reflecting on one's own performance, reasoning on one's own performance, considering the overall situation, the habit of analyzing the relationship between variables, being flexible in various alternative solutions to mathematical problems and trying to solve mathematical problems. From the results of this study, lecturers can develop learning media, scaffolding, or teaching materials that accommodate different dispositional abilities of prospective teachers that can be used to improve the reflective thinking process.

Work environments are pivotal to teachers’ professional development. However, effective instruments assessing teachers’ perceived work context are still lacking. The principal aim of the present study was to validate a Work Environments Inventory for Teachers (WEIT) constructed using the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model. Two studies were implemented on two independent samples totaling 696 (232 for Study 1 and 464 for Study 2) schoolteachers in Mainland China. Both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were employed to cross-validate the WEIT. The external construct validity of the WEIT was estimated through investigating its connection with the Thinking Styles in Teaching Inventory. Findings indicated that the WEIT is an adequate measure to map the characteristics of work environments for schoolteachers. Limitations are discussed and implications for future studies are suggested.

This study aims to investigate the perceptions of Generation Z students about ideal learning after the pandemic in Indonesia. This research uses a qualitative design with a phenomenological approach. There were 30 students from 6 different campuses in Serang City, Banten, Indonesia, who used a purposive sampling technique as research participants. Data collection was carried out using semi-structured interviews, which were then analyzed using thematic analysis techniques. The findings of this study state that there are four main themes regarding ideal post-pandemic learning, namely: (a) learning that is not monotonous, (b) equal portions of theory and practice, (c) ideal learning managed by an ideal lecturer, and (d) the need for the application of blended learning. This research contributes to the current literature on designing ideal learning on campus after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Active learning (AL) techniques invite students to participate actively, either physically or mentally, in the learning process so that they can change their behavior efficiently to achieve great achievement. Still, there is insufficient knowledge concerning the dimensions of AL techniques for business subjects of secondary school students in Malaysia. Thus, the research’s goal is to assist in the determination of the instruments’ reliability to measure the AL techniques measurement scale for business subjects’ students using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) as well as reliability analysis. Moreover, this research conducted a self-administered survey among secondary school students who have taken business subjects as their elective subjects. From secondary schools in Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia, 123 respondents were randomly chosen for the sample. To measure the AL constructs, the study retained 30 items developed because no items have been omitted since the factor loading turned out higher than the 0.50 cut-off point and was used as a tool for data collection. Essentially, this research empirically validates the dimension which helps lead to AL techniques in business subjects that are improved, and the findings are particularly beneficial to secondary school students in Malaysia.