Calp, Şükran

It is very important for students and teachers to have a positive learning environment. The school that is an institution for educating children should be a peaceful and happy environment. There are principles such as love, respect, honesty, courage, empathy and kindness in the peaceful and happy schools. This study examined the concept of a “peaceful and happy school” and aimed to describe a peaceful and happy school from the point of view of primary school teachers and primary school students. It was designed with a case-study research model. A peaceful and happy school climate is the “case” of this study. The participants of the study consisted of 126 persons, 103 primary school students, and 23 primary school teachers from public schools in Turkey. Data were collected through face-to-face interviews from primary school students and teachers. Semi-structured interview form was used for both groups. At the end of the study, primary school teachers’ and students’ defini-tions of a peaceful and happy school were presented. It was understood from the findings that primary school students and teachers want to improve the same basic issues related to a peaceful and happy school.

Kaşkaya, Alper; Calp, Şükran; Kuru, Oğuzhan

Decision making is one of the most important life skills. While making correct, timely, accurate and appropriate decisions lead to positive changes in one’s life, making incorrect decisions may have a negative impact. It is an important issue to examine what the 4th grade students in primary school have about the decision-making ability to be achieved in adolescence and what qualities 4th grade primary students should have for this skill. Evaluation of 4th grade elementary school students for developmental characteristics and qualifications they need to have to be able to gain appropriate decision making ability by puberty emerges as an important issue. Even though age 9-10 is not a period when important or life changing decisions are made, it is still considered the period that individuals start to make real decisions in their life. In this age period, we believe that attempts can be made to help children use their decision making ability more effectively by identifying factors affecting this behavior. In this regard, the aim of this study is to determine factors that have impact on children’s decision making process. This study is designed as a case study and conducted according to qualitative research approach. The study was conducted with 34 elementary school students and 3 teachers. Student interview forms developed by researchers were used to collect the data. In accordance with the data obtained, interviews were conducted with the teachers. The content analysis is included during data analysis process. In our study, we have shown that TV-media, family-close family/friends, neighborhood, the teaching process and some developmental characteristics are found to have affected children’s decision making.

Kişoǧlu, Mustafa; Gürbüz, Hasan; Erkol, Mehmet; Akar, Muhammed Said; Akilli, Mustafa

The fundamental factor of environmental education is teachers who are well-informed about environmental issues. This research aimed to determine prospective Turkish elementary science teachers' knowledge level about causes, consequences and reducing of the greenhouse effect and to investigate the effect of gender, information source and membership in the environmental foundations on their knowledge. We also aimed to learn their views on environmental education given in university. Twenty-six Likert-scale items developed by Cin (2006) were used for data collection. The scale was applied to 215 prospective teachers from two universities in eastern Turkey. Results indicated that the majority of prospective teachers had misunderstandings about causes, consequences and reducing of the greenhouse effect. According to the analysis of demographic variables, there were significant differences in participants' mean scores based on gender and information sources. Additionally, prospective teachers found environmental education inadequate for different reasons.