The purpose of this study was to describe high school students' "physics", physics lesson" and "physics teacher" conceptions by using metaphors. 313 students participated in the study from different high school types in Siirt, Turkey. A metaphorical perception form constructed by researcher was individually conducted, digitally recorded and analyzed. Codes and conceptual categories were created. The results demonstrate that students describe physics and physics lesson by using content, function, affective and cognitive characteristics and physics teacher by using cognitive, affective, personality and physical characteristics. Although constructivist approaches are applied in Turkish physics education program, the results show that most of the high school students still think that physics is a complex and difficult subject. The other result of the study shows that students think that physics is a developing subject area but physics lesson is not developing course. About physics teachers students believe that they are very knowledgeable and intelligent people. Some recommendations are made for researchers and program developers.

This qualitative study was designed to introduce STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) activities to preservice science teachers and identify their views about STEM materials. In this context, a competition was organized with 42 preservice science teachers (13 male-29 female) who took Instructional Technologies and Material Development course in Elementary Science Education Department in Siirt University. The competition consisted of 5 categories: balloon powered car, mousetrap car, water rocket, spaghetti bridge 1 (durability) and spaghetti bridge 2 (visuality). Structured interview form developed by researchers was used as data collection instrument. The results were analyzed with the conventional content analysis. Results indicated that participants (especially females) are more willing to use STEM materials in their future teaching life. Participants mostly believe that STEM materials facilitate learning, enhance retention and increase self-confidence. However, there are also pre-service science teachers who believe that preparation of STEM materials is difficult, takes too much time and not appropriate to students' levels.

The purpose of this study is to explore the effects of instructional mode, methods, and interaction between them. In order to achieve this purpose, two two-level-independent variables were defined, teaching modes (blended vs. face-to-face) and teaching methods (expository vs. inquiry). Thus, a 2x2 factorial design was performed with four treatment groups of 314 students. Before and after the treatments, pre-tests and posttests on achievement in electricity concepts, science process skills, and attitudes toward physics were administered. For the analysis of the data multivariate analysis of covariance were performed. It was found that the effect of blended mode is not dependent upon the teaching methods implemented. Related to the effects of instructional mode; blended instruction is more effective than face-to-face instruction in supporting students' achievement in electricity and science process skills. Additionally, it was found that the expository teaching method is as effective as the inquiry teaching method.

This study is aimed at first introducing a well-known discrepant event; inseparable phone books and second, turning it into an experiment for high school or middle school students. This discrepant event could be used especially to indicate how friction force can be effective in producing an unexpected result. Demonstration, discussion, explanation and experiment steps are presented on how to turn a simple discrepant event into an instructional activity. Results showed the relationships between number of pages and force, as well as between amounts of interleave and force. In addition to these, the mathematical equation for the total force between all interleaved pages is derived. As a conclusion, this study demonstrated that not only can phone books be used, but also ordinary books, to investigate this discrepant event. This experiment can be conducted as an example to show the agreement between theoretical and experimental results along with the confounding variables. This discrepant event can be used to create a cognitive conflict in students' minds about the concepts of 'force and motion' and 'friction force'.

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