No abstract

Schools, the where educational activities are carried out, are among the major institutions society considers as important. Schools undertake strategic responsibilities in maintaining cultural values and conveying them to future generations. The primary responsibility in achieving these missions is assigned to the school administrators. The purpose of this study is to determine the perceptions of school administrators on institutional culture. This is a qualitative study conducted on school administrators who were selected based on the volunteering principle. Perceptions of school administrators concerning their institutions' culture and the differences between their institutional culture and other institution's cultures were determined and analyzed. Findings of this study suggest that school administrators have both positive and negative opinions regarding their institutional culture and cultural difference. While love-respect, collaboration-solidarity and common history were prominent positive opinions; lack of communication, lack of shared values and low expectation were prominent negative opinions. In addition, participants stated the environment as a crucial factor when defining culture.

Schools, which enable children to socialize and adapt with the society, are obliged to undergo changes over time. With this respect, many alternative educational practices have been developed. Home schools, whose applicability has increased recently, are only one of these alternative educational practices. The main purpose of the implementation is to remove the bad habits acquired from schools and to enable cultural transmission. There are no comprehensive studies in Turkey on homeschooling. This study was conducted to determine how homeschooling is perceived and its applicability in Turkey. The study group consists of teachers, school administrators and educational inspectors working in secondary schools. A total of 23 focus group discussions were carried out with the participants and qualitative research method was used. The stakeholders were asked to state their opinions on the question "What do you think homeschooling is?" and then general information was given by the researcher. When the opinions are considered, there are differences among the stakeholders. After general information was given by the researcher, answers for the question "Is homeschooling applicable in Turkey? Why?" was sought. With this respect, the opinions were classified as positive, negative and suggestions for possible outcomes.

In the scope of the study it was aimed to develop the acceptance scale of LEGO robotics instructional practices to determine the prospective teachers' acception of LEGO robotics instructional practices. Scale development study was carried out with the help of 360 prospective teachers having been educated at Bartin University during the 2016-2017 academic semester. Before testing form of the scale was applied to the prospective teachers, they had been introduced on LEGO Mindstorms EV3 set and how to integrate these sets into learning and teaching process. Item analysis studies were done with the correlational analysis method and the factor structure of the scale was determined with the exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis methods. Both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis studies indicated the scale had one factor and four components. The components of the scale was called as perceived benefit, perceived easy use, intention to use and attitude. Cronbach Alpha reliability parameter of the whole scale was found as .956 and Cronbach Alpha reliability parameters of the components of the scale were found respectively as .924; .929; .834, .915. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis studies as well as Cronbach Alpha parameters indicated the acceptance scale of LEGO robotics instructional practices has been a reliable and valid data collection tool.

The purpose of this study is to identify the problems that teachers working in rural regions encounter concerning the Turkish educational system during the years they lack knowledge and experience and to determine their needs for mentorship services. The data was collected through an interview form and 11 teachers who works in rural regions participated into the research voluntarily. The study group was defined using purposeful sampling method. The data were analyzed through the content analysis processes. According to the findings of the study; teachers working in rural regions encounter serious problems in time management during the early years of their profession and that the effectiveness of presenting teaching contents decrease due to lack of family participation, low level of student academic achievement, poor physical conditions of the school and insufficient amount of teaching materials. It was also observed that they had problems in administrative issues and official correspondence. Arranging effective in-service training activities and offering mentorship services for inexperienced teachers in rural regions may help to resolve these problems. Keywords Teacher training, mentoring, teacher qualifications, professional development, mentoring needsKırsalda çalışan öğretmenlerin mesleğin ilk yıllarında mentorluk ihtiyaçları ÖZ Bu çalışma ile Türk eğitim sisteminde kırsalda görevli öğretmenlerin bilgi ve deneyim eksikliği yaşadıkları dönemlerde yaşadıkları sorunların belirlenerek, mentorluk hizmetine olan gereksinimlerinin tespit edilmesi amaçlanmıştır. Araştırmada veriler görüşme formu aracılığıyla toplanmış ve araştırmaya kırsal bölgelerde çalışan 11 öğretmen gönüllük esasına göre katılmışlardır. Çalışma grubunun belirlenmesinde amaçlı örnekleme yöntemi kullanılmıştır. Verilerin analizinde nitel araştırma yöntemlerinden içerik analizi yöntemi kullanılmıştır. Araştırma sonucunda ulaşılan bulgular; kırsalda görevli öğretmenlerin görevlerinin ilk yıllarında zaman yönetiminde ciddi sıkıntılar yaşadığı, aile katılımının yetersiz oluşu ile öğrencilerin akademik başarı düzeylerinin düşük olması ve okulun fizik şartlarının yetersizliği ile öğretim materyallerinin eksik oluşu birleşince öğretim içeriğinin sunumunda verimliliğin azaldığı belirlenmiştir. İdari işlerin yürütülmesinde, resmi yazışmalarda sorun yaşandığı tespit edilmiştir. Bütün bu olumsuzlukların giderilmesi açısından etkin hizmetiçi eğitim etkinliklerin düzenlenmesi ve kırsalda görevli öğretmenlerin görevlerinin ilk yıllarında deneyimi az öğretmenlere yol gösterici ya da bir mentorun rehberlik etmesi mentorluk hizmetinin sunulması önemli görülmektedir.