Today, one of the matters in the world agenda is definitely human rights. Awareness on human rights, willingness to use and to protect them voluntarily, be conscious about the necessity of the protection of those rights and also understanding to protect what, why and how accrue just through education. So, education is very important for human rights. Especially, the social studies and citizenship and human rights lessons form the base of this kind of education. In this context, the aim of this study is to determinate the perceptions of social studies teachers about “children's rights” and to describe the position of Turkey for children's rights. The descriptive method was used in this study. Social studies teachers who worked at schools in Istanbul formed the universe of this study. And, 400 social studies teachers were selected among the social studies teachers who worked at schools in Istanbul through random sampling method formed the sample group. An inquiry form about the perceptions on children's rights is applied to whole group and researchers interviewed with 30 of them. The data that acquired through interviews and inquiry forms are analyzed in descriptive process. Descriptive analyze means summarization and interpretation of the data according to themes and the interview questions which were determined before the analyze process. At the end of the study, teachers stated that in reality, children are behind of the some aims of the Children's rights Contract in Turkey.

As the part of a larger project aiming at unearthing the role of classroom interaction in the construction of classroom order, this study presented a sample of order mechanism in the classroom environment. Rooted in the theoretical and methodological principles of conversation analysis, it investigated the mechanism of how the order in the classroom was established, organized and sustained mutually by the teacher and students. The classroom talk of 20 children aging from 3 to 5 in a laboratory kindergarten located at a Midwestern university in the United States was recorded for one week. The analysis focused on the scenes of trouble that revealed the interactional organization of order with particular reference to the participants’ demonstrable actions. The closer look at the order mechanism suggested that the order in the classroom was a mutual achievement constructed in the details of classroom interactions.

The purpose of this study is to determine the high school teachers’ opinions related to the communication skills in terms of classroom management. In the spring semester of 2005-2006, 121 teachers working in high schools in Kütahya participated to the present research. The research was conducted by means of survey method and its data was collected through a survey entitled “Communication Questionnaire” which was developed by Altinkurt (2003). In order to determine the difference in the opinions of the teachers with reference to variables such as gender and experience in the profession, “Independent Sample T Test” and “Kruskal Wallis H” test were used. The findings of the research revealed that in most of the statements, the participants accommodate with the general communication skills such as, sending effective messages, effective listening and giving effective feedback in terms of classroom management aspect. It was also found out that the communication features of the teachers show slight differences in terms of variables of gender and experience in the profession.

This study involved students who were enrolled in the 3rd semester of a Master of Educational Research and Assessment program at the Institute of Education and Research during their teaching practicum. The purpose of the study was to examine the effectiveness of group reflection activity in professional growth of practicing teachers during practice teaching. The data was collected from eleven students who were videoed during teaching practice. The selection of students to be videoed was made on the basis of their grades in pedagogy related courses on campus. Five students with the highest grades and six students with the lowest grades were selected for this purpose. Each student was assessed through peer observations during practice teaching sessions. The data was collected through twenty-seven observations. Twenty-two observations were taken before the reflection sessions and five after the reflection sessions. During the reflection session they were shown their recorded videos along with summary statistics of peer observations. The activity helped in identifying strengths and weaknesses of each participant evident during teaching. The effect of the reflection sessions was clearly visible on their performance during post reflection peer observations. This effect was generally uniform for both high achievers and low achievers. There is little conclusive evidence that performance in pedagogy related courses can be helpful in predicting the difference in the ability to learn from self and group reflective activities in general.

This paper aims at stressing the importance of interjections in foreign language learning and teaching. It defines the concept of interjection, assesses the strengths and weaknesses of two contemporary approaches to interjections, and expounds the concept of pragmatic competence with reference to interjections. It tries to find out whether non-native students of ELT department in the European University of Lefke (EUL) context can use the right interjection in the related context successfully or not. Further, it investigates three most frequently used interjections and three least frequently used interjections by these students and the underlying reason(s) for this pragmatic phenomenon. The results of the study reveal that wow, ow and hey are three most frequently used interjections, whereas dear, eh, and uh are three least frequently used interjections by non-native students of ELT department in the EUL context.

This study aims to determine the predictive power of math anxiety and perceived social support from teacher for mathematics achievement of primary students. The sample was consisted of 292 Primary School students (156 girls and 136 boys) attending 7th and 8th grade. For such a correlational study, “Math Anxiety Scale” developed by Erol (***) to determine student’ mathematics anxiety and “Perceived Social Support Scale-Revised/Teacher Support Subscale” developed by Yildirm (***) to determine students’ teacher support perception were used. Averages of students’ mathematics scores in the first term of 2007-2008 academic year were taken as mathematic achievement scores. The obtained data were analyzed by means of a package program for Windows called SPSS 11.5. Independent-Sample t Test, Pearson Correlation Analyze and Regression Analyze were employed to analyze the obtained data. Results of the study revealed that math anxiety and teacher support are significant predictors of students’ math achievements. Math anxiety is a more powerful predictor for male students’ math achievements regarding gender. For female students, teacher support is a more powerful predictor for math achievement.

The purpose of the present study was to explore the validity and reliability of the Turkish version of the Teacher Efficacy scale (TES) developed by Gibson and Dembo, and the differences among the beginning and ending pre-service classroom teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs. Data in this study were collected from a total number of 405 preservice classroom teachers. Descriptive statistics, principal component with varimax factor analysis, and t test were used to explore the data analyses. Results revealed that Gibson and Dembo’ two-factor TES may not be a valid tool to evaluate efficacy beliefs of preservice classroom teachers in Turkey.

The teaching of local history in schools as the part of the history curriculum has been advocated since the beginning of the twentieth century. Local history has been recommended as an active way of history learning in some countries. Local history has become popular again with debates on globalisation and postmodernism in recent years. The importance of local history is emphasised in the new Social Knowledge and History Curriculum in Turkey. The aim of this article is discuss the place and purpose of local history in history education. It will review relevant literature to elicit the potential benefits and problems of using local history in schools. Some suggestions to use local history during history lessons more effectively also will be given.