As teaching is a nation-building profession, the career motivations of pre-service teachers are worth exploring. This study examines the career motivations of 283 Turkish pre-service teachers who have chosen teaching as a career. Accordingly, they were asked questions about deciding to teach, career perceptions, and major expectations. A profile of the participants was then developed by analyzing their responses in quantitative and qualitative ways as being descriptive, statistical, and inductive steps. It is seen that extrinsic, altruistic, and intrinsic motivations all play a role when individuals choose teaching as a career. In addition, although altruistic motives are very dominant for females, mercenary-based extrinsic motives are dominant for males. Associatively, teaching is further desired as a first profession by females. In light of the findings, we give suggestions for teacher training institutions and policy makers.

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Many developed are conducting studies to increase their citizens’ interest in the STEM fields and educate STEM-literate individuals. These studies include STEM-related curricula and professional development programs to enhance knowledge and skills of teachers who will implement them. In the last five years, Turkey has also been following these developments closely and carrying out activities to this end. One example of these studies is in-service training activities conducted by Kayseri STEM Center affiliated with Kayseri Directorate of National Education (MoNE). The aim of this study was to find out the effects of Kayseri MoNE STEM Centre on teachers’ Professional development. It was implemented as a special case study. Study data were collected by means of semi-structured interviews, field notes and semi-structured observation tools. Results of the study revealed that Kayseri Professional Development Program of Ministry of National Education has an enhancing effect on STEM-related knowledge and skills and implementation of these skills in their classes.

This study was carried out with 15 university students who came from different European countries to Turkey within ERASMUS mobility program, for the purpose of learning Turkish as a Foreign Language in a Turkish University in one month period. It was, then, aimed to determine the participants' beliefs on the Turkish courses which were integrated with target culture. To that end, one open-ended and four close-ended questions were asked to participants at the end of the courses, so as to determine their perceptions related to language skills, cultural awareness, attitude towards target culture, evaluation upon current courses. Within qualitative paradigm, by adopting a case study design, the data which were derived from close-ended questions were digitized in a descriptive manner. The data related to one open-ended question were analyzed by inductive content analysis with QSR NVivo 8 software. As a result, it was revealed that there was a meaningful conceptual similarity between scholars' views and participants' beliefs concerning the effects of culture-integrated language courses on success, cultural awareness, and attitude towards target society. Hence, it can be asserted that culture-integrated language courses have a positive influence on TFL learners' motivation, language skills, cultural awareness, and attitude towards target society. The results of this study are also in parallel with the scholar views which assert the necessity of target culture in foreign language teaching. It can also be mentioned that this study would be a seminal research with regard to those of culture and language in this newly founded discipline which is titled as Turkish as a Foreign Language (TFL).

Many developed are conducting studies to increase their citizens' interest in the STEM fields and educate STEM-literate individuals. These studies include STEM-related curricula and professional development programs to enhance knowledge and skills of teachers who will implement them. In the last five years, Turkey has also been following these developments closely and carrying out activities to this end. One example of these studies is in-service training activities conducted by Kayseri STEM Center affiliated with Kayseri Directorate of National Education (MoNE). The aim of this study was to find out the effects of Kayseri MoNE STEM Centre on teachers' Professional development. It was implemented as a special case study. Study data were collected by means of semi-structured interviews, field notes and semi-structured observation tools. Results of the study revealed that Kayseri Professional Development Program of Ministry of National Education has an enhancing effect on STEM-related knowledge and skills and implementation of these skills in their classes.